


Let's Hear It for the Boy

by louciferish



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Boarding School, Ballet, Fluff, High School, Long-Haired Victor Nikiforov, M/M, Makeup, POV Victor Nikiforov, Reverse Big Bang Challenge, Same Age Victuuri, School Uniforms, Studying, bento boxes, the fic equivalent of cotton candy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-07-05
Packaged: 2020-05-16 13:45:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 23,469
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19319404
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/louciferish/pseuds/louciferish
Summary: Victor Nikiforov is the darling of Nepela Academy. Not only is he the prince of the ballet and the top student in his year, but he's basically a fashion icon with his long silver hair and modified uniforms. Going into his senior year, he's not thinking of much besides graduating—until he stumbles across a mysterious dancer practicing in the ballet studio after classes. Suddenly, Victor has a lot more on his mind than ballet and history exams.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first time participating in a reverse bang, and I had a great time! I was fortunate to grab exactly the prompt I was hoping for, and to work with [Purin](https://www.instagram.com/cutiepuriin/), who is as friendly and responsive as they are talented. In addition to the two required arts, they did a bunch of cute little chibis that I'm using as chapter headers, and it's perfect. <3
> 
> Title ripped off from the song of the same name which wound up being on repeat on the spotify playlist I made to vibe this story. 
> 
> This story is complete! It's about 23k in total and I'll be updating essentially every other day for two weeks. Updates will be on: 6/24, 6/26, 6/28, 7/1, 7/3, and the final chapter on Friday, 7/5.
> 
> You can see both of Purin's full pieces for the story [here](https://cutiepurin.tumblr.com/post/185784445966/lets-hear-it-for-the-boy).
> 
> Eternal gratitude to thewalrus_said for betaing this story~

When Victor received his first brochures for Nepela Academy and began to daydream about attending, this tableau is exactly what he had pictured. He’s lying on his back in the wide front lawn, cool green grass brushing his bare arms where he’s rolled up his sleeves. His head is pillowed on Mila’s lap and her fingers are busy plaiting clover blossoms into his long silver hair.

It would be idyllic if not for the sound of Chris and Yuri’s inane bickering overriding the birdsong. 

“You misunderstand,” Christophe says, accent rendering his words round and haughty. “I’m not saying you’re wrong. I’m telling you that you are an infant without any sense of logic.”

Victor doesn’t need to see Yuri’s face to know the underclassman rage. If Yuri is silent, it’s because he's _boiling_. 

“You two are killing my mood here,” Victor says. “I was drowsing. I was almost asleep. What the hell are you even going on about?”

“The First World War,” Chris answers.

“The Russian Revolution,” says Yuri.

Well, there’s half the problem right there. In the ensuing silence, the other thing interrupting Victor’s rest creeps back to the forefront of his thoughts. He, too, has a history exam tomorrow, which he should be studying for rather than napping. Out to kill two birds with one stone, he props himself up on an elbow and searches the nearby grass for his book bag. 

Everyone’s things are piled together beside Georgi under the tree, satchels overlapping, textbooks and papers spilling out to intermingle in the grass. Georgi has his own dark leather bag propped up against his side and is deeply engrossed in a paperback with a lurid, pastel cover. Victor eyes the rest of the bags—Yuri’s leopard print stacked on top of Mila’s transparent plastic, and Chris’ red vinyl on the bottom. 

Victor’s stomach clenches. His bag isn’t there. 

He sits up, and Mila makes a frustrated, throaty sound as he pulls away and breaks her concentration on the braids. “Have you guys seen my book bag?”

Everyone stops to glance around, but it only confirms what Victor already noticed—his things are nowhere to be found.

“Did someone steal it?” Georgi asks, combing through the grass beside him with his fingers.

“We go to a fancy-ass boarding school,” Yuri snaps at him. “Who the hell do you think would steal Victor’s stupid backpack?”

Victor tries to trace his steps. They’d walked straight out to the lawn from ballet practice, all together. Spring is only just gaining ground here after a cold and wet winter, and he’d been eager to get out of the stuffy old red brick buildings of the academy and enjoy some sunlight and blue sky for once. He can’t recall setting his bag down with the others…

Some of the tension drops from Victor’s shoulders. “I think I left it in the dance studio,” he says. “It’s probably still in my cubby.”

As he climbs to his feet, Christophe snaps his own history book closed on his lap. “Do you want help looking?”

“No, it’s fine,” Victor says. He grabs his blazer from Mila’s lap and tosses it over his shoulder, just in case one of the teachers spots him and tries to nag him for being out of uniform—not that it really matters, considering the things Victor has done to his uniform. “I’ll go in and grab it. It should only take a moment.”

He strides off, cutting straight through the lawn rather than using the pebbled pathways. After hours, there’s no one around to tell him not to.

Victor heaves open the double doors of the main building and slows his pace as he goes inside for fear that the clack of his soles on the floors will draw attention. The halls still echo with his steps, but he doesn’t mind having an excuse to take his time. It gives him a chance to admire the school without crowds of sweaty, desperate teenagers all around him.

He’s always loved the collision of new and old visible in the halls of Nepela Academy—the polished oak floors with their years of scuff marks, the shining steel lockers installed in an era when fewer students opt to live on campus, and even the bright blue shade of the women’s restroom signs that betray the academy’s long history as an all-boys school. The last thought makes Victor’s nose wrinkle. He can’t imagine attending a school with only boys. It would probably smell even worse, less mildew and more locker room.

Slowing even further, Victor moves to hug the wall as he approaches the dance studio. He _needs_ his bag, but he’d rather not run into Madam Baranovskaya by accident if he can help it. She’s none too fond of Victor’s tendency toward forgetfulness, and her tongue is sharp and precise as a surgeon’s needle when she disapproves. Victor’s mama always says it’s because Lilia has such high standards for her students, but some days Victor could do without her comments.

He slides along the door until he’s close enough to turn his head and peek into the room through the slitted window. Catching sight of movement, Victor stops, transfixed.

There’s no sign of Lilia, but the studio is far from empty. In front of the mirrored wall is a dancer, a boy with black hair clad in dark leggings and a loose tank top. His back is to the door, and he shows no sign of noticing Victor, engrossed as he is in his dance.

Although the dancer began en pointe, this is _not_ ballet. The boy’s movement is jerky at times, then sinuous. He curves and bends as if his bones were made of clay, or water. Though the ballet studio is sound-proofed, Victor can feel a beat thrumming against his fingers where he presses to the door, a steady deep bass that vibrates through his bloodstream. 

It’s not as if Victor’s never seen contemporary dance before—regardless of what some of the other students have said, his family does own a TV—it’s only that he’s never seen it in _here_ —this room, this school. 

Lilia must have said it a hundred times this semester alone: _Dance is the most human of arts, and ballet is its pinnacle._ It’s no secret what she thinks of other styles and forms. So, where did _this_ student come from, using Lilia’s studio outside of lesson hours?

With his back flush against the door, Victor can feel the moment it ceases to vibrate with the music, even before the dancer sags, falling forward to rest his hands on his knees, gasping for breath. Slowly, Victor turns the handle and opens the door a sliver. When he hears no music, he pushes it open and steps inside.

The dancer doesn’t seem to notice Victor’s reflection in the mirror, staring down while he catches his breath. At the sound of Victor’s voice, he jumps.

“That was incredible,” Victor says, a wide grin stretching his face. “Wow! Where did you learn all that?”

The other boy spins around to face him, and now Victor can see his dark brown eyes, half-hidden beneath black hair that clumps and sticks to his forehead in sweaty streaks. He gapes at Victor, who clasps his hands behind his back, rocking on his toes as he waits for an answer.

“Nikiforov.” Another voice, snapping from over his shoulder. Victor turns to find a teacher waiting, scowling out at him from the doorway of the studio’s little office space. “What on earth do you think you’re doing? Do I send students over to interrupt _your_ practices?”

Victor recognizes the young teacher, with her long hair and her dancer’s grace, but he’s never had her in class. It takes him a moment to place her name, and her countenance only grows more stormy as she waits for him to respond.

“No, Ms. Okukawa,” Victor says once he can get his tongue to cooperate, straightening his posture out of habit. 

“Do you think Madam Baranovskaya would be pleased to know her prince is interfering with another student’s progress?”

“No, Ms. Okukawa,” he repeats dutifully, then rushes to add. “I didn’t mean to interrupt! I was coming to get my book bag.” Victor nods to the cubbies against the wall, where his gold bag is impossible to miss tucked in among the miscellaneous shoes and clothes piled on the other shelves.

The teacher’s disapproving look doesn’t disappear entirely, but the downward twist of her mouth recedes. “Oh, very well then,” she concedes. “But be quick with it.”

Victor leaps across the room and retrieves his things, hugging his bag against his chest. He turns his head slightly, checking the reflection over his shoulder. He wonders if he could linger long enough to get another look at the dancer, but Ms. Okukawa’s eyes are still narrowed, following him as he steps lightly to the door. She doesn’t turn away from watching until Victor actually pushes the door open.

As he moves into the hallway, Victor can hear her clap her hands together behind him. “Okay, Yuuri,” she calls out, sounding much more cheerful than she was for him. “That was good. Let’s start again, from the line—”

The door clicks shut, soundproofing cutting off the rest of her words. Victor leans back against the wood panel until he feels the beat of the song start to vibrate up his spine again.

So. _Yuuri_.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter was exceptionally short! The rest will be more like this length.
> 
> I've edited the story notes to include a link to Purin's post with both art pieces for this bang! We haven't reached those points in the story yet, but the only plot here is "teenage romance" so they're hardly a spoiler - more like a taste.

Victor always arrives in the dining hall at the tail end of breakfast, when all the hot food items have long gone cold.

He’s far from lazy, and it’s not like he’s particularly particularly attached to his bed. Victor is a morning person, always up at an hour when Chris is still drooling into his pillow, but Victor’s morning routine takes time, and he can’t afford to cut many corners. He can’t be lax when it comes to doing his morning stretches—Lilia would absolutely notice—and then there’s his morning run and the much-needed shower afterward. Victor’s hair is his signature around campus, but it takes forever to style, even with the best blow dryer he can afford. 

Then, there are clothes to pick out, swapping out pins and style details on his blazer, and the occasional little touch-up on his face with concealer, mascara, or lip gloss. 

Today, Victor is in a hurry. He has a history exam in his second period, which means the morning is time for even more last ditch studying. He stayed up last night until he was drooping at his desk, and Chris had finally just _taken_ Victor’s notes away like it was an intervention, but even still, he can’t just relax and let valuable time slip away. Half an hour of review could mean the difference between a high B and a low A. 

He throws his hair up in a quick ponytail for convenience, then rolls the hems of his pants for good measure. A saucy bit of ankle never hurt anyone before an exam.

By the time he slides into his seat across from Yuri, his oatmeal is already cold. The bacon is also soggy, but it might have been that way to begin with—hard to say. Victor pours himself a cup of tea with one hand while excavating his congealing cereal with the other, knowing he has precious few minutes to eat before the first bell rings.

“Good morning,” he greets the table around a mouth of what tastes like wet concrete. 

Mila has her head pillowed on her arm, face down into the tabletop, but she grunts and briefly raises one hand in a drowsy greeting.

“You’re chipper,” Yuri says, eyes narrowed as he levels his spoon at Victor. His nails are painted a deep aubergine, and Victor makes a note to borrow the color later. “Don’t you have a test this morning?”

“Yes!” And he’ll be buried back in his notes the moment the breakfast bell rings. “But—you’ll never believe this—I met the most wonderful dancer yesterday.”

Down the table, Christophe groans. He picks up a chunk of orange peel from the table and lobs it at Victor’s face. “Don’t let him start this again,” Chris snips. “I had to listen to it half the night already, and he doesn’t even know the boy’s name!”

“I _do_ ,” Victor protests. “It’s Yuuri!”

“What?” Yuri snaps, straightening from his moody teenage slump. “It is not.”

“No, not Yuri, _Yuuri_ ,” Victor insists, repeating, “Yuuuuuuri,” like the vowel is a mournful low.

Mila lifts her head at the sound, finger combing her messy red curls back from her face. “Am I dreaming? You’re trying to say you just met Yuuri _Katsuki_?”

Victor doesn’t know his surname, but how many Yuuris could there be in the school? He nods.

Chris sighs, shaking his head as he covers his face with his hands. Next to Victor, Georgi turns to give him a quizzical look.

“But you already know Yuuri Katsuki,” Georgi says. “He was your lab partner for a whole semester in tenth form Chemistry. I sat right behind you both.”

Victor claws through his memory for traces of that class. He doesn’t remember much about who his lab partner was—dark hair, glasses, quiet and easily flustered. They hadn’t spoken much, and Victor had wound up carrying most of the projects because the boy always deferred to his decisions. Could it really be the same Yuuri?

“Well,” Victor says. “It’s different now. Something has changed about him since then!”

“Yeah, puberty,” Chris mutters into his hands.

Victor elects to ignore him and props his head up on his hand, elbow resting on the solid wood table as he expounds. “He was dancing in the studio, but it wasn’t ballet! Something new—contemporary. The movement was beautiful. I could almost hear the music through the door.”

Yuri shakes his head. “Yeah, right, like Lilia would allow other dance styles in her room. It sounds like you just had a weird-ass wet dream to me.”

“I’m going to ask him for dance lessons,” Victor says, grinning at Yuri just to spite him. He twists the knife deeper with, “You could learn a thing or two from him too, Yuri,” and watches the other boy sputter in response. 

“You’re going to _what_?” Chris drops his hands and stares down the table at him. “Victor, don’t you think—”

Whatever he was going to ask gets cut off by the first period bell. Victor gives a brief, mournful glance to the half-filled bowl of grey slop he didn’t manage to eat, knowing he’ll be hungry later. It’s his own fault for talking too much, though. He knows how short the dining period is.

Victor stands with the others and gathers his things, opening his history notes to read while he walks. Later, he can tackle this Yuuri problem. First: his history exam.

-

Once his test is out of the way, Victor switches focus immediately. He has, at the very least, _questions_ for Yuuri, but he also has a problem: as far as he can tell, he has no classes with Yuuri this year. Their schedules don’t seem to align at all, aside from the few break periods the entire school takes together.

At lunch, Victor’s distraction is noticeable. As his friends bicker and gossip over exams and scandal, Victor only picks at his salad, stirring the dressing in until the greens are bruised and wilted. He cranes his neck over and over, scanning the other tables in the dining hall for Yuuri, but lunch is soon half over, and Victor still hasn’t managed to spot his target.

With a wet slap, a slice of pickle lands on the back of Victor’s hand and sticks, cold and foul. He whips back around to face his friends and finds Christophe looking suspiciously innocent.

“What?” Victor snaps, shaking the pickle free. It flops onto the table between them. Georgi plucks it up and tosses it into his mouth.

“I’ve been calling your name for ten minutes,” Chris says. He’s re-bleached the tips of his hair, and his curls are so light they’re almost lavender. Victor must have been really preoccupied last night to not notice the smell. “But if you don’t want to know where Katsuki sits, you’re _welcome_ to continue ignoring me.” 

A stand-off ensues. Victor would prefer to not engage with anyone who throws old vegetables at him, and Chris isn’t known to make things easy. Still, Victor’s only other option is to wait to run into Yuuri again. That might take hours, or even _days_.

“Okay,” he sighs. “What do you want?”

Chris bats his eyes, a move that hasn’t worked on Victor in at least three years. “Why would I want anything?” Yuri snorts in reply, inadvertently blowing bubbles in his milk, and Chris reaches around Mila to poke him in the arm.

“Just name your price,” Victor says quickly. If he doesn’t cut them off, a war of fingers is sure to erupt, and then Chris will be too distracted to give him what he needs.

Chris rubs his chin as if stroking a goatee, and Victor has to restrain himself from reacting. Chris’ last attempt at growing facial hair had been a patchy disaster not even he could get away with. Their biology teacher had ordered him to shave—or threatened a teacher would do it for him.

“Custom blazer,” Chris demands at last. “With all-new lining of my choice.”

Victor winces. Projects like that are time-intensive, but worse than that, it gets expensive if Chris expects Victor to purchase the fabric. “I have a budget,” he reminds his roommate.

Chris waves the comment away. “Yes, yes. I’ll buy it myself. You just have to do the dirty work.”

“Deal,” says Victor, eager to end the trade before the lunch bell rings and he loses all hope.

Smirking, Chris nods over Victor’s shoulder. “Two tables back, right across from you. Phichit Chulanont is his roommate.”

Victor turns, straining for a view. Phichit, he knows—he and Chris had dated very briefly early in the school year, and the other boy spent many afternoons laid out on the rug in Victor’s dorm, playing Nintendo.

Sure enough, there’s a chair right next to Phichit that’s notably empty. 

Victor whips back around to glare at his roommate. “He’s not there!”

Chris doesn’t even have the grace to fake astonishment. “Nope,” he says. “I said I’d tell you where he sits, not where he _is_.” He stabs at the stale, dry cake that passes itself off as dessert today and pops a bite into his mouth. “Phichit probably knows, though.”

Knowing lunch will end any minute, Victor stuffs a couple forkfuls of salad into his mouth, washes it down with milk, and only pauses to grab his bag before marching over to Phichit’s table and plopping down in the empty seat next to him.

“Oh,” Phichit says by way of greeting when Victor manifests. “Hello! What are you doing over here? Has someone driven a wedge between you and Christophe?” He gasps, covering his mouth with one hand. “Am I the fulcrum of a love triangle?”

“Not yet,” Victor concedes. He’s never had any designs on Phichit, but he admires the boy’s sharp tongue. Chris was definitely an idiot for not hanging onto him longer. “I’m actually looking for your roommate.”

“ _Yuuri_?” 

The speaker is a slight girl that Victor doesn’t recognise, her brown hair pulled up into a pert ponytail. She flushes adorably when Victor looks at her, clapping her hands over her mouth. Beside her is a scowling boy with broad shoulders. _Nishigori_ , Victor thinks, remembering it as a name printed on the back of a jersey, though he can’t recall which sport—something with a lot of fighting, from the look of him.

“Yep,” Victor nods. “That’s the one. I’ve got a project to ask him about, but I can’t give more details than that.” He winks, adding, “It’s top secret.”

Nishigori digs his spoon into his soup bowl and begins loudly scraping at the bottom. “Bullshit,” he mutters into the bowl.

“Don’t mind him,” Phichit interjects, and Victor turns to face him again, watching the Thai boy’s eyes wrinkle when he smiles. “He’s just grumpy this time of year when there’s no one to punch. I’m sure Yuuri would _love_ to help you with your top secret project. He usually eats lunch outside when the weather is nice, but I can give you his schedule if you want to catch him after class.”

Victor pastes on his very best smile. “That would be perfect.”

Phichit rips a corner off a page in one of his notebooks, scribbling out a series of room numbers as Victor watches. There’s a strange warming sensation creeping up the back of his neck, and he turns to find Nishigori still watching him with narrowed eyes.

“There you go,” Phichit exclaims, sliding the slip of paper across the table. “Good luck capturing the elusive Yuuri!”

At that moment, the fourth period bell begins to ring out over the loudspeakers. It’s soon drowned out by a flurry of voices and the screech of chairs on the floor as every student in the dining hall rushes to gather their things, discard their trash, and scurry off to the next course. 

Victor raises his eyes from the slip of paper in his hand and meets Nishigori’s eyes again. The larger boy shifts his weight for a moment, as if physically measuring out his words, then levels a finger at Victor. 

“Don’t you dare hurt him,” the other boy commands. 

Startled, Victor is caught without an assurance on his tongue. Before he can reply or ask what that means, Nishigori shoulders his bag and leaves, following the petite brunette girl from the table. 

It’s a strange thing for someone to say, but then, Victor doesn’t really know Yuuri, and he certainly doesn’t know his friends, aside from Phichit. There must be some sort of history to prompt that comment, or maybe Nishigori is just a possessive sort. Whatever it is, Victor tucks the warning away along with the piece of paper in his pocket.

-

He should know better than to allow himself distractions when he’s in ballet, but Victor can’t help it today. Even as he sweeps through the motions of the dance, toes pointed and arms outstretched, his eyes are drifting to the clock. Over the soft sway of violins and cello, he can almost hear the second hand ticking ever closer to 3:30 and the ending bell. 

Across the room, the slip of paper Phichit handed him at lunch is folded into an inside pocket on his satchel, but Victor has already memorized the room number for Yuuri’s last class. He’s still not certain what he’s going to say, exactly, but he trusts that will be fine. He’s always been good at improvising.

Abruptly, Victor’s field of vision is filled with the stern visage of Lilia Baranovskaya herself, her brown-black hair twisted back into a bun so tight even Victor can feel it pulling at her skin. She purses her lips.

“Do you have somewhere else to be today, Mister Nikiforov, or are you here, in my classroom?” she asks, pitching her voice to carry throughout the studio.

“I’m here, Madam,” he answers. In the hall, the final bell begins to ring.

“Good. Looking at your lines, I thought you were back in ninth form for a moment.” She presses a button on the small remote in her hand, and the song on the stereo starts over from the beginning. “For those in the room who are now confused, why don’t you try again? This time, demonstrate what a senior ballet student’s work should look like, if you can.”

“Yes, Madam,” Victor murmurs, taking his position. Pointing out that class has ended will only result in additional time after. It’s best to put his head down, perform his routine, and hope she releases him in time to catch Yuuri. 

Somehow, Victor survives. Lilia has some degree of mercy and lets them go after only one run-through, but Victor doesn’t miss the glares and other assorted dirty looks being tossed his direction by the other students who were held back because of his inattention. He can’t waste time trying to mend fences, though. He rushes to the cubbies the moment Lilia says “dismissed,” changes his shoes, and grabs his bag, slinging it across his body as he scurries out the door. He doesn’t even bother to change out of his dance clothes before sprinting down the hallway toward Yuuri’s classroom.

When Victor reaches the math class, he sticks his head in the door, but finds the room empty aside from Mr. Cialdini, who has his back to the doorway, humming to himself as he erases equations from the blackboard. 

Dejected, Victor turns toward the exit to leave. The halls ahead are nearly empty already, only a few students lingering at the end of the day, stowing their belongings away in lockers or waiting on friends. One of the steel doors clangs shut, catching Victor’s attention, and he glimpses a familiar figure moving toward the double doors.

Victor doesn’t hesitate—he races down the hall, sprinting to catch up as if Yuuri will vanish if he reaches the door first.

Yuuri turns right as Victor reaches him, probably from the sound of Victor’s racing footsteps, and his eyes blow wide as Victor catches him by the arm.

“Yuuri,” Victor gasps, breathing faster from the mad rush. “I caught you!”

“You did,” Yuuri agrees, blinking. “But _why_?”

Victor takes a moment to even his breathing before he replies, watching Yuuri through the whispy bangs that escaped his bun in ballet. The boy he’s looking at now doesn’t bear much resemblance to the dancer he saw just twenty-four hours ago. It’s a real Clark Kent moment, seeing Yuuri with his glasses now, hiding behind his generic school uniform, his hair hanging in unkempt tendrils down to his eyebrows. 

God, their school ties are ugly. Victor forgets how ugly they are sometimes. His may be somewhere on the floor of his wardrobe. He dropped it there one day in his first year and never picked it up.

With his breathing back under control, Victor flashes Yuuri a smile. “I wanted to tell you again how much I enjoyed your dancing yesterday.”

Yuuri blushes, rose petal tones creeping across his cheeks and nose. “Oh. It’s nothing. I mean, thank you, but I have a lot to learn still. I’m not anywhere near as good as you.” The words spill out in a rush. “Your recital last year was just… _incredible_.”

Somehow, Yuuri gets even redder.

“There’s no comparison,” Victor argues, pressing his fingers in where he still has a grip on Yuuri’s upper arm. “It’s two different disciplines, of course. What you can do, the way you were moving— _wow_.”

Victor releases Yuuri abruptly and claps his hands before him in an attitude of prayer, declaring, “I want you to teach me how.”

Yuuri gapes. “WHAT?”

“Tutor me, Yuuri,” Victor proclaims, throwing his arms out. Yuuri’s eyes dart from side to side, looking at everything but Victor. “I want to learn how to dance like you do.”

“D-don’t!” Yuuri grabs at Victor’s arms, pushing them back down to his sides. “You’re making a scene. If you really want to learn, I’m sure Min—Ms. Okukawa would love to have you.”

That’s the last answer Victor wants to hear. “I can’t,” he says, pouting. “My official schedule is already full. Besides, Lilia would _murder_ me if she found out. Or worse, move me to a lower role in the ballet. I need this to be hush-hush—just you and me.”

Yuuri groans in response, hiding his face in his hands. His ears are bright red. 

“I can’t pay you,” Victor admits. “But I can trade you for it. An equal exchange of services!”

At that, Yuuri’s fingers part slightly, and he peeks out through the spaces. “What kind of services?”

In reality, Victor hasn’t thought this far. To delay, he taps a finger on his chin, pursing his lips as if weighing the question very seriously. “Maybe, if there’s someone you like, I can lend you my romantic expertise,” he says, smiling playfully. “Or... kissing lessons?”

It’s supposed to be a joke. Christophe would find the very idea hilarious—Victor’s far too busy to date, and all he really knows about romance is never to take advice from Georgi. But Yuuri doesn’t laugh at all. Instead, he drops his hands, and his mouth snaps shut. 

“Don’t mock me,” Yuuri says. His voice is harsh, arms stiff at his sides. It’s an amazing transformation. He’d been so cute before, with his adorable blushes, but this is-

“Wow,” Victor says softly. Of course, that does nothing to stop Yuuri from turning away. “I’m sorry!” he calls out, and Yuuri pauses. “I didn’t mean it that way, please. I’ll be serious.”

Yuuri looks back at him, but his expression is still closed, and Victor’s not sure what his counter-offer really is. He considers what he knows about Yuuri already—a beautiful dancer, but a bit shy. He likes to take lunch outside by himself. When they’d had Chemistry together, Victor had really only noticed he seemed flustered and a bit clumsy. Victor had done most of the heavy lifting on their joint assignments.

He claps his hands together again, landing on an answer. “I’ll tutor you,” he declares. “Academically, I mean. I’m the top of our class, you know.”

“I know,” Yuuri says. He’s still frowning, but some of the stiffness has faded from his stance, and he chews his lip absently. Victor can only wait to see what he says.

“Uh, sure,” Yuuri agrees at last, his cheeks coloring once more, and Victor grins in triumph. “I guess it couldn’t hurt anything, and I do have a Physics test coming up that I’ve barely-”

“Great!” Victor interrupts, punching the air. Of course, that reminds him—he _also_ has that Physics test coming up. _Shit._ “We can start right away. In fact, let’s start tomorrow.” Victor adjusts his satchel and dashes for the door, leaving Yuuri caught open-mouthed in his wake. “After school, tomorrow, my room—see you then!”

If Yuuri has a response to that, the wind whips it away when Victor throws the double doors open wide, bursting out onto the academy’s vast front lawn.


	3. Chapter 3

Victor’s still picking up spare change from his dresser, putting it into a cup, when the door to his dorm room opens. His head shoots up, but then he sees Chris’ familiar golden curls push inside.

“Oh,” Victor says, disappointment thick on the word. “It’s you. I need you to leave.”

“Excuse me?” Chris draws back in afront, pressing a hand to his chest, then proceeds into the room anyway. “I think this is also my room. Maybe I need _you_ to leave.” He casts an eye around the room and pauses, noticing the subtle change. “You cleaned?” 

Victor shrugs, turning away. “I tidied,” he says. “Yuuri’s coming over to study.”

“Oh,” Chris says, then, with a knowing smile, “Ohhhhhh. What will you give me to leave?”

“ _Christophe_.” Victor aggressively straightens the pillows on his bed. “I’ll give you another day in this room without spilling nail polish remover all over your sheets, is what I’ll give you. But if you want to join our Physics study group, then by all means—stick around.”

Chris wrinkles his nose, but Victor’s not sure if it’s from the threat of acetone on his pillows or the word ‘physics.’ A weasel, Chris managed to get out of taking that class by opting for a self-guided literature course instead. It makes him sound very smart, but from what Victor’s seen, it mostly entails Chris sitting in the corner of their room and weeping into _The Collected Oscar Wilde_ two nights a week.

“Fine. I’ll go,” Chris huffs. Like a gay Mister Rogers, he discards his blazer in a heap on the foot of his twin bed and pulls a bright purple cardigan from his closet instead. “But I don’t want to come back to find your thong hanging from the doorknob.”

There’s a snappy comeback on the tip of Victor’s tongue, but it’s interrupted by a light tap at the door to the room. Before Victor can reach, Chris sweeps the door open, exposing Yuuri alone in the hallway, hugging a stack of books to his chest. 

Chris glances back over his shoulder at Victor. “And that’s my cue,” he says. “Behave, children. I’ll be back whenever I lose patience with Georgi.”

“Not long, then,” Victor mutters, but Chris is already shouldering past Yuuri and down the hallway.

Yuuri’s still waiting in the door, and Victor holds it open for him, gesturing for him to come inside. Even though the school day is over, Yuuri hasn’t changed out of his uniform, his shirt still buttoned to the throat. It looks intensely uncomfortable to Victor, who always changes into t-shirts and soft things the moment he gets back to his room, but maybe that’s Yuuri’s style. Maybe he _likes_ feeling constricted.

“Welcome! Make yourself at home,” Victor says, and watches as Yuuri drops his books to settle cross-legged on the soft shag rug between Chris and Victor’s beds. Victor usually prefers to sit on his bed to study, his back propped up on a big pillow, but Yuuri’s the guest, so Victor follows his lead and kneels on the rug. 

Yuuri opens the physics textbook to the first chapter and lays it open between them. “I was thinking on the way over here,” he says. “If you don’t mind, how did you answer problem five on page 183?”

Victor leans over for a closer look, and his mind switches gears. He fumbles for his notebook on the bed, pulling it down to compare their responses.

Although this wasn’t always the case, with practice it’s become easy for him to get sucked into the work, buried in his own notes, then Yuuri’s, then the text. He highlights passages in the book as they discuss which questions are most likely to appear on the exam, and he digs out a copy of his last test for help determining where the instructor pulled her material from. 

There are so many equations to memorize, so many rules to know, and Victor begins to worry. Last exam, they’d been given a short cheat sheet with hints—what if she doesn’t do that again this time? What if she does now, but not for the final at the end of the year? Victor had gotten an 87 on the last exam, but he could have done better. This time, he needs to crack 90. 

He sets to work trying to commit the equations for this chapter to memory, copying it down in his notebook over and over, the scratch of his pencil on the paper only interrupted by the occasional sigh or shift of fabric from Yuuri’s end of the rug. 

Yuuri’s sock-covered feet slide along the floor, bumping Victor’s ankles, and he jerks them back, tucking them back beneath him with a murmured apology. Victor’s attention is pulled back from the brink of physics madness, and he can’t help but notice the way Yuuri shifts, squirming, changing position over and again. He puts his notebook in his lap, then slides it onto the floor. He lies out on his belly, then twists onto his back, holding the spiral up over his face.

“Are you okay?” Victor asks. “If the floor is uncomfortable, we can use the bed.”

Startled, Yuuri drops his notes, flapping down onto his chest. “No, it’s fine. I’m fine.”

“Really? Because you look like you’re about to wiggle your way under Chris’s bed, and I can’t promise you’ll like what you find down there.” Yuuri sits up abruptly at that, scrambling to get his feet back onto the rug. His hair is a mess, little tendrils waving in the air, charged with static from the rub of clothing against carpet fiber. “I have pillows,” Victor offers.

“It’s not that.” Yuuri drops his notebook and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Sorry. I tend to get antsy when I have to sit still and focus for so long. It’s been over an hour. Do you not take breaks?”

“Not really,” Victor admits, shrugging. He leans back against the side of his bed and wiggles his bare toes in the rug, letting his notes slide down his legs. “I study in marathons most of the time. Sometimes I’ll do a whole Saturday. Chris has to bring me lunch and shove it under my nose or I’ll forget to eat anything besides tea and crackers.”

“Wow.” Yuuri pauses. “That’s so hard to imagine.”

“Why?”

Yuuri chews his lip, avoiding Victor’s gaze. “I didn’t know you spent so much time studying. It comes so easy to you in class that, well, I sort of thought you just… knew the answers naturally.” 

Victor barks a laugh, too loud in the little room with its cinder block walls and peeling white paint. “Nothing about me is natural,” he says. It comes out sounding much more bitter than he meant it to be, and Yuuri watches him without comment, big brown eyes full of curiosity. 

Now it’s Victor’s turn to avoid, and he fumbles to deflect Yuuri’s scrutiny. “You know,” he says. “The hair, the make-up, all that stuff. You’re in my year, so I guess you’d know the truth already, but the freshmen seem to be under the impression that I was _born_ with full lashes and silver hair.”

“Oh, yeah,” Yuuri smiles, and his eyes seem to sparkle as he thinks about it. “I remember first year, the day you turned up to class with your hair bleached for the first time.”

“I thought our biology instructor was going to have a heart attack, his face was so red,” Victor grins. He’d been so pleased with the results of his experiment. His natural hair color was close enough to grey already in the right light—a fair, cool blond that was just a touch too ashy to be remarkable. It had only taken a few minutes of bleach and a little toner to change his image forever.

“I thought you were going to get suspended,” Yuuri admits. “First the hair dye, then the eyeliner.”

Victor winces. “Let’s not talk about the eyeliner phase,” he says. “I’ve seen the yearbook. I looked like a very confused raccoon that someone put a suit jacket on.”

“No!” Yuuri’s vehement protest startles them both, and Victor stares as Yuuri sits up, his mouth tightening. “It was great. It shook everyone up. I always thought it was really-” Yuuri stops, licking his lips, and finishes more quietly. “It was really brave. I could never be that daring.” 

“Of course you could,” Victor scoffs, “and you would look absolutely _killer_ , I’m sure. If you like it, you should try it.”

“I wouldn’t know how.”

The comment slips so easily from Yuuri’s lips. He has no idea of the monster he’s just unleashed. As soon as those words are spoken, the idea wraps Victor’s heart in its fist. He grins wide, sitting forward. “Ohhh,” he says, “I can show you!”

Yuuri’s eyes go wide, his hands frozen on the pages of the notebook in his lap. “You don’t have to—”

“Nonsense!” Victor’s holding himself very still, but only because if he didn’t he’d be vibrating from excitement. He clasps his hands in front of his chest. “Please, Yuuri. Let me do your makeup?”

There must be something in the way he asks that Yuuri finds compelling. He nods, not speaking, and only startles a little when Victor leaps to his feet, scrambling across the bed to bounce off on the other side where he keeps his makeup in a little zipper bag atop his dresser. 

Once he has it, he rolls back across the bed, hair flying as he perches on the edge and dumps the contents of the bag out onto his forest green comforter. “Up here,” Victor says, patting the spot in front of him on the bed. He starts to sort out his stuff, dividing the concealer from the eyeliner, half his mind already cycling through which shades in his arsenal will look best with Yuuri’s coloring.

Of course, they’ll have to skip foundation—Victor’s wouldn’t match Yuuri’s skin tone—but oh, there’s so much he can do without it.

The mattress dips under Yuuri’s weight and some of the tubes roll toward him from the shift in the surface beneath them. Victor grabs a couple before they can escape, bundling them into his fist with the other tools he’s picked out.

When Victor looks up, armed and ready for battle, he finds Yuuri perched on the very edge of the bed, hands gripping tight on his own thighs. As Victor crawls forward on his knees, Yuuri leans subtly back.

“I’m not going to hurt you,” Victor laughs, breathy. “I promise. I just need you to turn to face me more.”

With a solemn nod, Yuuri complies, and finally Victor can edge in close enough to reach Yuuri’s face. He pulls out his biggest, softest brush, stirs it through the sheer mineral powder he has uncapped on his lap, then taps it to shake most of it loose. When Victor reaches out to remove Yuuri’s blue-framed glasses, he still flinches.

“Close your eyes,” Victor reminds him, and watches as Yuuri’s lids snap tightly shut. Victor grins, remembering his own eyes screwed tight until his vision burst with red. Of course, he was just a kid back then. The brush dances over Yuuri’s cheeks and forehead, softly smoothing and evening the tone without changing the color. “You never even tried this?”

“No,” Yuuri says quietly. “It’s kind of overwhelming. There’s a lot to know. Even with videos and such, I’m not sure how anyone ever knows where to begin.”

“I had help early on,” Victor says, shrugging as he loads up the brush and goes back for a second pass. “When I was younger, my mother used to do it for performances—just a little, so I wouldn’t get washed out under the stage lights. When I got here, she couldn’t do it for me anymore, and Lilia had other students to focus on. I had to improvise.”

“And then you decided you liked it?” There’s a thin line running down between Yuuri’s brows, a sure sign that he’s displeased or confused, though it’s not obvious why.

Victor hums, considering how honest he can and should be. “I like the way it makes people look at me,” he says at last.

“Of course,” say Yuuri, and Victor’s not sure if that means _of course they look at you_ or _of course you like it_ , but either way, he’s pleased at the compliment.

When the shadow brush touches Yuuri’s eyelid, he flinches again, and Victor catches his chin with his free hand. “Hold still,” he says, “and try to relax.”

Yuuri doesn’t answer, except to go so still he’s barely even breathing. He’s anything but relaxed, but Victor takes the opportunity to scoot in closer, fingers on Yuuri’s chin tilting his face upward ever so slightly toward the light. 

Victor has helped the others do their makeup before performances at times, swapping tips with Mila and the other ballerinas in the wings of the stage, but that was in a crowded, noisy back room abuzz with activity and preparation. This moment is different. It’s quiet in the dorms right now, no television noise filtering in from the common room. It could almost be Victor and Yuuri alone in the whole building, even the whole school.

He can feel the soft puff of Yuuri’s breath as it escapes his parted lips, rushing across the thin skin on the inside of Victor’s wrist as he turns his hand again, tightening the last sweeps of dark powder on the edge of Yuuri’s eye. 

Victor puts the brush back in his lap, and his fingers fall on the mascara. “Open your eyes and look up at the ceiling,” he says, and waits for Yuuri to comply before leaning in to do his lashes. Their faces are so close like this. Victor can see the light flecks of gold that dust through the folds of dark coffee tones in Yuuri’s irises. Next time, Victor should buy gold eyeliner. It would look terrible on him, but on _Yuuri_ —

“There,” he says, watching Yuuri’s lashes flutter like hummingbird wings. Victor sits back on his heels, releasing Yuuri’s chin to get a better look at the full image. His heart clenches as those smokey eyes meet his own. As he expected, Yuuri in makeup is a _knockout_.

“All done?” Yuuri asks, and the question snaps Victor’s attention back to his mouth, his dusty rose lips.

“Ah,” Victor exclaims. “Wait, one more thing.”

It feels like no big deal to run his thumb through the little jar of lip gloss and apply it for Yuuri, just like Victor has been applying everything else—that is, until the exact moment that Victor’s thumb glides across Yuuri’s lips and they part on an audible, shaking breath, and then it is suddenly a very, _very_ big deal.

Victor’s hand drops, and he wipes away the rest of the gloss on the surface of his pants, averting his eyes. He swallows and tightens his fingers on his own leg, getting a grip on himself literally as well as figuratively. “There you go!” He tries to sound perky. “Now you’re perfect.”

He shoots a glance back over, and he’s arrested again by the full force of his own work. _Perfect_ , he thinks again. It’s more makeup than he normally puts on himself in the morning, even without foundation, but a bit of eyeliner and a basic smokey eye can do a lot—especially when the canvas is already so intriguing. Before, Yuuri was already quite cute. Now, his eyes are dark and heavy-lidded above glistening lips and naturally high cheekbones that Victor barely even touched.

“Wow,” Victor breathes, unable to stop himself.

At the word, Yuuri turns red, the color spreading beneath the sheer powder on his skin, from his cheeks all the way up to the tips of his ears. He fumbles with the bedspread next to him, then unfolds his glasses and pushes them back on before hopping to his feet to check the view in the dresser mirror.

Yuuri tilts his head, observing the results at a few different angles. “I don’t look that different,” he pronounces, doubt lacing through his words.

“Well, good makeup is meant to be subtle.” Victor kneels on the bed behind him, then reaches out to pull the loose strands of hair back from Yuuri’s face. “Believe me, people would notice.”

But Yuuri only ducks out from under Victor’s touch, turning to press his back against the dresser. “Oh, it’s getting late,” he says. “Wasn’t I supposed to give you a dance lesson?”

“Sure,” Victor says slowly. “But-” He makes a show of looking around them—the two beds dominating most of the space, jumbled in between the tiny built-in desks and dressers. There’s not a lot of open real estate in a dorm room. Victor has pushed to rearrange and make more space for his stretches and warm-ups, but Chris refuses to bunk their beds, vehemently protesting any activity which would require them to argue as to who was top and who was bottom.

“Ah.” Yuuri clearly recognizes the problem they’re now stuck with and frowns. “Since it’s my half of the trade, I can look into finding somewhere else we can practice. In the meantime, we can wait on the study sessions until I find something.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Victor waves away Yuuri’s protest. “You can pay me back later.”

A somewhat awkward silence falls over them, staring at one another alone in the dorm together. Down the hallway, a door slams, and then there’s a distant cheer—probably one of the other boys watching some sports game in his room. 

Victor forces himself to break the emptiness building between them, unsure where it came from. Things had been so _easy_ a moment ago. “Do you… want to study more?” 

“I’m not sure I can focus again right now,” Yuuri admits. He tugs on the bottom hem of his blazer. Victor can’t believe he never even took off his _jacket_. “Maybe we should call it a night for now.”

“Sure.” Victor tries to sound positive, even though it feels like he’s walking across a frozen pond at the moment; he’s not sure how thin the ice gets at the center. “Again, same time Thursday?”

“Okay,” Yuuri agrees. He flashes the briefest hint of a smile and steps around the end of the bed, stooping to gather his books from the rug. “That sounds good.”

He’s almost out the door when Victor remembers. He lunges, catching the edge of the door in his hand before it can close all the way. “Oh, Yuuri!” 

Yuuri turns, clutching his books tighter. “Yes?”

“Don’t forget to take the make-up off and wash your face before bed,” Victor says. “It’s bad for your skin to leave it on overnight.”

“I will,” Yuuri promises, and from the small, embarrassed smile Victor guesses that Yuuri already forgot. “Have a good night.”

“Good night!” Victor waits for Yuuri to walk to the end of the hall before closing the door. He drops back onto his bed and takes in the silence for a moment. Once again, he’s alone.

Propping his pillows up against the wall, he leans over to snag his notebook and pencil from the floor again. The page full of equations stares up at him, forgotten. He’s lost track of where he was in copying them. 

He starts over again, from the beginning.


	4. Chapter 4

  


The tutoring is going very well, as far as Victor can tell. It turns out he’s a pretty good teacher. Certainly, Yuuri seems to pick up on everything they cover in their study sessions with alarming alacrity, and the scores Victor’s seen from his quizzes and papers have all been high enough to confirm it.

Victor’s own quizzes are shamefully uninspired things, but that’s not a surprise. His routine has changed. That always affects his habits for a little while. Besides, it’s worth it to be studying with Yuuri from now on. Victor and Chris are almost never in the same classes, and Chris often disappears to spend the evening with whichever boy currently has his full attention—or, failing that, to watch films in Georgi’s room with the others.

It hasn’t really occurred to Victor before, how lonely his evenings were when he studied on his own. 

A few weeks into the new normal, they still haven’t found anywhere to stretch out for a dance practice, but aside from that, everything is going swimmingly. 

Victor’s fresh out of his history class, crossing the lawn side by side with Georgi to get to the dining hall for lunch, when he spots Yuuri’s familiar profile up ahead, his fine black hair fluffed up and tossed about in the springtime breeze. 

“Yuuri!” He calls out as he dashes across the grass, Georgi forgotten. Yuuri stops, eyebrows raised. As Victor jogs up, he notices that Yuuri is with Phichit and the others from that table: Nishigori and the girl Victor still doesn’t know. 

“Hi, Victor,” Yuuri says with a small smile. “Did you get much more done after I left last night?”

“No.” Victor pouts, jamming his hands into his pants pockets for emphasis. “I couldn’t stop thinking about—” He cuts himself off, noticing they have a very interested audience encircling them. Phichit has his phone out, held aloft in the distinctive position of someone taking video. 

Victor looks directly into the camera. “Can I _help_ you?”

“Phichit,” Yuuri groans, waving his hands toward his roommate, “you have to turn that thing off.”

“And miss documenting your biggest moments?” When Yuuri crosses his arms, Phichit finally lowers the phone. “Fine. Fine.” He tilts his head at Victor, a sly smile spreading over his face. “Please, continue. Yuuri left last night, and you couldn’t stop thinking about…”

Yuuri shoves at Phichit’s shoulder. “Get out. Go on—go get your lunch. I’m sure there’s plenty of gossip in there for you.”

With a parting wave, Phichit skips off toward the dining hall, the other two in tow behind him.

“Are you coming to lunch today?” Victor asks. “I thought you always ate outside.”

“Yeah, but I have to get food from the buffet before I can bring it out.” Yuuri wrinkles his nose. “Usually our Lit class lets out a few minutes early, but we got held up today because the Crispino twins couldn’t stop arguing with each other about _Wuthering Heights_.”

Victor winces, then nods as his group catches up and Chris brushes his shoulder deliberately on passing. “That sounds like a special type of hell,” Victor says, but then brightens up, grinning. “But, hey! I caught you! You should eat lunch with my table.” He nods toward the rapidly filling dining hall and takes off, Yuuri following at a more sedate pace. Lunch hours are limited, and the tastiest options are usually in short supply. If they dawdle out on the lawn any longer, Victor will be forced to drink skim milk instead of whole.

“Oh!” Yuuri says as they push through the double doors into the lunch hall. “About that density calculation we were discussing last night; I think I figured it out.”

They chat idly about their homework as they work their way around the buffet line. A lot of the tastiest food items are gone already, as usual, and Victor pulls a face as he realizes he’s forced to settle for tuna salad because the kitchen has already run out of boiled eggs. Glancing over to check what Yuuri’s picked out, he notices that Yuuri’s lunch is packed up in a cardboard take-out tray instead of a plate.

“Are you going to eat outdoors still?” Victor pouts as they approach the end of the line. “Yuuri! I really wanted you to come sit with us.”

Yuuri looks down at his tray, not meeting Victor’s eyes. “I’m not sure if I should.”

“Of course you should,” Victor insists. “We never see each other outside of studying! Unless… you only want me for my brain?” Yuuri’s head snaps up at that, and Victor grins. “Come on. Come sit with us, please?”

“I don’t know if they’ll like me,” Yuuri admits quietly, darting a glance across the hall where Victor’s group is already seated. It’s hard to miss them today. Chris has made the delightfully daring choice to forego his blazer entirely, replacing it with a hot pink jacket that looks like it was imported via time machine directly from 1983.

Victor waves away Yuuri’s concern. “Of course they’ll like you,” he scoffs. “They’re my friends. You’re my friend. Honestly, what’s not to like? You already have so much in common—me!”

Yuuri shakes his head, but he can’t hide his cute little smile from Victor. “Fine, fine,” he relents. “We can try.” 

Picking his way between messy, outflung chairs and crowded tables, Victor leads the way across the cavernous dining hall to the stretch he and his friends have claimed for themselves. It’s always loud at lunchtime, a cacophonous roar of competing voices over YouTube and music playing from phones as the whole school takes advantage of the short span of midday in which they’re allowed to have devices out. As they swerve through the room, occasionally someone calls out to Victor, and he pauses to smile and wave in their direction, but never for long. In most cases, he can’t put a name to the face. 

When they get to the table, Yuri and Mila both have their elbows on the table and phones out, texting furiously. Georgi is molding his mashed potato into the shape of a heart—never a good sign—and only Chris watches them approach, his expression unreadable.

“So,” Chris says, smiling slightly. “Finally we meet the famous Yuuri who stole our Victor away.”

Victor rolls his eyes. “Clearly not, since we’re both right here. Georgi, scoot over.”

Georgi picks up his plate and starts to move, but Yuri cuts in, glancing up from his phone to scowl at them. “What? No! He can’t sit here. It’s too confusing; we don’t have room for more than one Yuri.”

“Oohhh, we could give you a nickname,” Mila says, with a mischievous glint in her blue eyes. “Like… kitten!”

Yuri sputters, face turning red. “Shut up,” he hisses, then jabs a finger at Yuuri. “If anyone gets a stupid name, it should be him. I was here first. _I’m_ the original Yuri.”

“Technically,” Chris interjects, propping his head on his hand as he lounges against the table. “Victor’s Yuuri is older, which means _he’s_ the original Yuri… kitten.”

As Yuri rounds on Chris to launch what will no doubt be an eloquent and carefully planned counterpoint, Victor feels Yuuri tug gently on the sleeve of his blazer. When he turns to make a joke, he finds Yuuri’s eyes are focused intently on the patch of floor between his own feet. 

“I think I’m going to eat outside after all,” Yuuri says, almost too quiet over the din of voices in the hall. “I don’t want to kick anyone out of their seat.”

“Don’t mind them,” Victor says. “They make a lot of noise, but it’s all just wind and pretension. Georgi doesn’t care at all.”

Yuuri still won’t look up from the floor, but says, “No,” with much more force this time. “I think I just want to sit outside where it’s quiet. You should stay here, with your friends.”

Before Victor can raise any further protest, Yuuri takes his food and walks away, aiming for the double doors. Deflated, Victor sets his plate down at his usual spot.

“Oh no,” Chris quips. “Trouble in paradise already?”

“Shut up, Chris,” Victor snaps as he takes his seat, and the others all go quiet at his harsh tone. They all tease each other often enough, but it’s rare for anyone to truly take offense. “Can’t you just be _friendly_ for once instead of scaring people away.”

“Oh, come on,” Yuri says. “It’s not our fault he’s a delicate fucking flower.” 

Mila interjects, poking Yuri in the side with a single manicured finger. “You didn’t pull that attitude when Phichit started sitting with us.”

“Or,” Georgi adds, “when my Anya was still with us.” He breaks off on a sigh, with the wistful look of a man mourning a long-dead love, even though in reality Anya is just down the table still, sitting with the Polo player she took up with after dumping Georgi last semester.

Chris finishes carving his chicken and sets down his silverware, hands flat on the table as he meets Victor’s eyes. “I didn’t mean to drive him away,” he says. “You just surprised me with all of this. We hardly ever see you outside of classes anymore; even when we’re in the dorm, you’re a million miles away.” Chris shakes his head, and begins stabbing at his food. “I never thought you’d be the type to let a new boyfriend override the rest of your life.” 

“That’s ridiculous,” Victor protests. “You’re being weird. Yuuri and I aren’t even _dating_. We study together.”

Chris mimes choking on a bit of lettuce. “Excuse me?” he splutters. “I came home a few nights ago, and Yuuri was sitting on your lap!”

Victor feels his face heat, remembering the crack of the door startling them, the way they’d sprung apart. Mila and Georgi are now looking in his direction with a suspicious twist to their faces. “He wasn’t on my lap,” Victor says. “I was leaning over his shoulder to point something out!”

“Uh-huh.” Chris raises an eyebrow. “And the other time, when I saw you holding hands?”

“Yuuri was showing me a new yoga position, to stretch my back!”

“I’m confused,” Mila says. “How would that involve holding hands, exactly?”

“You gossips are worse than my old aunties,” Victor hisses, chair scraping back as he rises and picks his plate up again. “I’m not going to just sit here and be… _assassinated_!”

As he storms away from the idiots he calls friends, Christophe shouts after him, “Bye! Say hi to Yuuri for us!”

Outside, it’s a pleasant spring day in the sunlight, warm enough to tempt Victor to remove his blazer, but then a breeze whips up, pushing a cold reminder that winter hasn’t entirely lost its grip yet. He stands on the cobblestone path, gripping his plate with both hands, and scans the scenery. He doesn’t actually know where Yuuri’s bench is, as it turns out. Thankfully, the gods have some pity for Victor today—a scrap of trash scuttles across the lawn, propelled by the same wind that assaulted him and, tracing its path through the grass, Victor catches a glimpse of Yuuri, hunched over to protect the food dish on his lap.

Relieved, Victor hurries across the soft grass and drops onto the bench beside him. The stone seat is so cold, it feels damp through his trousers, but he puts a hand down to check and finds it dry. He breathes a sigh of relief. The last thing he needs today is to go back to class with a big wet spot on his butt. Yuuri turns to look as Victor sits, confusion clear in the crooked line of his lips.

“What are you doing?” Yuuri asks. His gaze falls to Victor’s lap, and the furrow between his brows grows deeper. “You brought a plate outside.”

“Yeah.” Victor shrugs. “I was in a hurry. I didn’t grab a take-out. Guess I’ll have to be careful not to drop it, huh?” He tries to calm Yuuri with a small smile, but Yuuri only looks increasingly baffled. “Sorry my friends are such assholes,” Victor adds.

Shrugging, Yuuri looks back down at his food, stirring and poking at it with his fork. “It’s okay,” he says. “I told you they wouldn’t like me.”

“It’s _not_ okay.” Victor surprises even himself with how fierce his defense is, and Yuuri is taken aback. “And they like you fine, it’s _me_ they’re being—” He cuts himself off with a frustrated grumble. “I guess they’re being possessive.”

“I don’t blame them for that.” Yuuri is still struggling with his food, constantly attentive to the container in his lap, but few bites make it to his lips. “They’re your friends, and you guys are, you know— _you_.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know,” Yuuri repeats, waving his hand around, gesturing to the stately brick buildings that encircle the lawn. “Top students. Dance stars. I’m not even supposed to be at a school like this. I just got lucky, the day of the exams.”

Victor frowns. “What do you mean, ‘lucky’? Like, you found a secret code hidden under the table with a list of all the right answers?”

“No, no, nothing like that,” Yuuri says, raising his hands as if to ward off the idea. “The test I got happened to have questions I knew the answers to, is all. I know others studied much harder than I did, but we hadn’t read the same books, and their scores fell just a bit below mine.”

“That’s not luck; that’s preparation. You got in from _exams_ , and you think you don’t deserve to be here?” Victor can’t keep the disbelief out of his voice. He lets his fork fall with a clatter onto his plate. “Yuuri, do you know how few students in this school actually score high enough on the exams alone?”

Yuuri shrugs. “Most of them, I guess.”

“If only,” Victor mutters, shaking his head. “Nepela takes less than ten percent of its admissions from exam scores. Most of the students who get in are here on athletics or legacy sponsorships. Like, Chris? His great-aunt sponsored him. He couldn’t pass that entrance exam to save his life. Hell, Georgi’s such a legacy, there’s a _building_ named after his great-great-grandfather.” Admittedly, the Popovich building is just an administrative hall, but it’s still a whole building. 

“Mila’s here for ballet only,” Victor continues, ticking off students he knows on his fingers. “The Crispinos got in for football.” He’s rapidly running out of names and drops his hands in frustration. He does know more examples, but he can’t recall the surnames of the black-haired loudmouth he knows is another legacy kid, or the stoic Korean boy who’s apparently a mathematics prodigy. 

Yuuri ducks his head, then murmurs. “Yuuko got sponsored by her cousin.”

“See?” Victor nudges their knees together, rocking Yuuri gently. “If anyone belongs here, it’s you. You _earned_ it.”

“You got in for ballet too, right?”

Victor snaps his mouth shut. He considers, for a moment, if Yuuri might be mocking him, but no—he turns toward Victor with a light in his eyes, head tilted in genuine curiosity. “Yes,” Victor admits reluctantly. “But through a special program. I still had to take the exams.”

Even just speaking about it makes his face burn with the echoes of humiliation. There’s a familiar, angry heat in his chest that he keeps thinking he’s outgrown. Yuuri is still watching, still curious, and Victor picks up his fork again, jabbing at his lunch to relieve some of the tension. 

“I had to get a scholarship,” Victor says quietly. “My mama couldn’t afford-” He can’t handle much more than that. He stuffs a bite of food into his mouth, just to have the excuse of chewing, and watches from the corner of his eye as understanding dawns on Yuuri.

If only ten percent of Nepela admission arrives from exams, the number coming in on scholarship is a tenth again of that. The admissions board of the school is happy enough to let in anyone who can afford it, provided a relative will vouch for them or they’ve proved to be high achievers in some way. Those who can’t afford the tuition, however, are expected to go above and beyond.

For Victor, it wasn’t simply good enough to excel at dance. He had to pass the exams as well. He had to audition. There was an essay component, and then _another_ dance audition, this time in front of Lilia herself. The whole process had meant time and money that Victor and his mother already didn’t have, and over a year of hard work to prove himself worthy.

And then, his first few days on campus, he’d made the fatal error of mentioning his scholarship.

The reaction from some of the other students had been… unkind. Victor prefers to pretend he’s forgotten it. He hasn’t. It’s the whole reason that Yuri now runs with Victor’s group of mostly seniors, despite being a first year—he, too, came in on scholarship. Victor knows Yuri still gets some hostility for that. Victor can only hope his help has prevented the worst of it. 

“I guess I never thought about it that way,” Yuuri says quietly. “But, we both don’t fit, do we?”

“I fit just fine,” Victor breezes. “Soon, it will be the rest of them who feel left out.” That had been his plan from the first missed hair appointment and the first bottle of nail polish. Victor has made sure since his first month here that he wouldn’t just beat the other students at their own game— He’d change the rules completely.

Across the lawn, the clocktower bell chimes to signal the hour, and Victor realizes that over half of the lunch period has passed with his food barely touched. He tucks in, trying to shovel as many calories as he can into his face. Lilia keeps protein shakes in the studio for emergencies when students miss meals, but they’re old-fashioned, chalky, banana-flavored monstrosities that Victor prefers to avoid. He’s gotten quite good at eating his meals quickly since he arrived at the academy, knowing the alternative that awaits him.

Glancing over, Victor notices that Yuuri is barely picking at his own lunch. “Is something wrong?” he asks. “You didn’t get the ‘tuna surprise’, did you? Rookie mistake. The surprise is that it tastes like feet.”

“How do you know what feet taste like?” Yuuri asks slyly.

“Because,” Victor pauses dramatically to raise his head, nose in the air as he finishes, “I’m a _prima ballerina_.” His impersonation of Lilia’s haughty tones is spot-on.

“That— That doesn’t make any sense,” Yuuri sputters, but his face cracks into a smile. 

Victor responds by doubling down, lips in a sour pucker, sucking in his cheeks. “The art of a dancer does not make _sense_ ,” he declares, and Yuuri dissolves entirely, giggling into his salad.

It’s not the first time Victor’s seen him crack a smile or laugh—study breaks to relax are mandatory with Yuuri around, but still, it doesn’t happen often enough. Yuuri’s smile is just delightful, brighter than the early afternoon sunlight pooling around them.

Once Yuuri recovers, Victor nudges him with his elbow. “Seriously, though. What did that lunch do to hurt you?”

“Nothing,” Yuuri says, shrugging a little. The smile fades, turns wistful, but doesn’t disappear entirely, and he pauses to actually take a bite of his food before speaking. “I guess… more than anything else here, the meals make me homesick. Some days, it’s hard to eat, knowing it’s not my mom’s cooking.”

“What do you miss?” Victor prompts, curious. His own mother was never much of a cook; they usually ate out, and his rare experiences with home cooking had been courtesy of aging great-aunts and distant cousins on occasional visits.

“Katsudon,” Yuuri says immediately. “Most of all. That’s my favorite. It’s like…,” he gestures, as if forming an explanation from the air, “It’s rice and pork and egg, but I can’t even describe what it tastes like really. It’s amazing. But I even miss the foods I didn’t like very much, and the little things.” His hands fall back into his lap. “I guess I miss eating them with everyone.

“I miss soba,” he continues, “And the ramen bar in my hometown, and eating dango off a stick at festivals with my sister.” He ducks his head. “And I miss the bento lunches my mom used to pack when I was in grade school, with the cute little animal shapes and encouraging notes tucked into the bag.” Yuuri glances over at Victor quickly, checking in with him from under the fringe of his hair. “I know I’m too old for that sort of stuff now. I must sound ridiculous.”

“What? No!” Victor insists, scooting closer on the bench. He clasps his hands together in his lap. “Cute animal-shaped lunches sound _amazing_ —are you kidding? I never— Tell me more.”

As Yuuri explains what bento looks like—with pictures on his phone as backup—they scoot closer together to share, heads bent side by side over the phone in Yuuri’s hand, plates of food cooling in their laps, forgotten.

It’s the bell that sends them jumping apart, ringing out over the school grounds to announce the end of the lunch period and warning them that soon the double doors of the dining hall will burst open, flooding the lawn with teenagers again. It’s Victor’s turn to hide his face this time, and the inexplicable heat spreading over his cheeks as he gropes for his backpack. Picking up his things, he says his goodbyes to Yuuri in hushed tones, then runs to return his plate to the kitchens, resigning himself to Lilia’s gross protein shakes sloshing around his half-empty stomach.


	5. Chapter 5

“Close your eyes,” Yuuri murmurs, his palms on Victor’s face, blackening the backs of his eyelids. “Keep them closed—no peeking.”

Victor grins, and of course he obeys, trying to keep his excitement under control. It’s not dignified to wiggle around like he wants to, with him getting ready to graduate to adulthood all too soon. He keeps his wiggles internal and his eyes closed tight.

Yuuri’s fingers trail sparks down Victor’s arm before he takes Victor’s hands in both of his own, towing Victor blind behind him. The grassy lawn springs beneath Victor’s toes, resilient from a couple days of light rain, and the setting sun turns the insides of his eyelids red and pink. 

He thought he’d be able to guess where they were going by the directions, but Yuuri seems to be deliberately turning him more than he needs, and Victor quickly loses track of where they might be on campus. All Victor knows is that Yuuri _finally_ found them a spot to dance together, but he’s been delightfully insistent that the actual location remain a surprise.

It’s fine. Victor loves a good surprise almost as much as he loves dancing. Maybe more. It’s a tough competition, either way.

“Watch out,” Yuuri says. “There’s three steps ahead, and then a door.”

Victor squeezes his eyes tighter and lets Yuuri guide him up. _Three steps and a door._ Could be just about any building on campus, other than the library (five steps) and the field equipment shed (no steps). The mystery continues.

The light soles on his dance shoes make a tapping sound with each step. It reverberates through an empty hall as they climb inside and shuffle closer to their destination. Victor can feel himself practically vibrating by now, overcome with curiosity about what strange little nook or forgotten classroom Yuuri could be leading him to. It’s tempting to slit his eyes open a smidge—a tiny peek wouldn’t hurt anything, right?—but he doesn’t want to ruin Yuuri’s big reveal moment. He bites his lip and keeps the secret.

After a few minutes of silent walking, Yuuri abruptly drops his hands, and Victor’s arms snap out, groping in the darkness until Yuuri’s fingers squeeze his again. “Sorry. I forgot to warn you—another door and then we’re there.”

“Okay.” Victor squeezes Yuuri’s hand back for reassurance and waits as the hinges creak softly, then Yuuri pulls him the last few feet through the doorway. 

The door clicks closed behind him, and Yuuri says, “Okay. You can open your eyes now.”

Victor’s eyes snap open immediately, but it takes them a second to focus—empty space, tan hardwood floors, a mirror—“Yuuri,” Victor says slowly, voice thick with questions. “This is the ballet studio.”

With a laugh that’s barely more than a breath, Yuuri says, “Wow. You’re not the top student for nothing.”

“Very funny,” Victor mutters, his gaze darting from Yuuri to the mirrored wall and then around the rest of the studio as he bounces lightly on his toes. “But we _can’t_ practice here. What if Lilia walks in?” He glances over at the office and pales when he sees a warm yellow light glowing through the slitted window.

His fear could seem over the top to the uninitiated, but the nerves are real. Upsetting Lilia in any significant way could easily upset his entire life—calls home to his mom, a change in his roles for their current performance, and even the looming worst case scenario where it impacts his scholarship. Graduation is still nearly two months away. Victor can’t afford to slip so far right now.

Yuuri follows Victor’s eyes and raises his hands in a calming gesture. “It’s fine; I promise. Minako gave us permission to be here.”

As if summoned by her name, the office door cracks open and Ms. Okukawa sticks her head out before turning off the office light. “You two had better behave,” she says, leveling a suspicious look at Yuuri, then a longer one in Victor’s direction. “Remember that I’ll be _right outside_ and that there is a _window_.”

Flushing under her scrutiny, Yuuri gives a short nod, and the instructor shoulders her bag and slips out the door, leaving them alone in the studio. 

Suddenly, the soundproofed room is too quiet.

Yuuri coughs lightly into his hand. “Okay. I’ll just— I’ll put on the music.”

He’s nervous, and Victor can’t blame him. After weeks of looking forward to this, Victor too feels electric and restless, like there are little creatures scurrying beneath his skin. This is a new experience for both of them.

Yuuri crosses the room to face an aging stereo system, and Victor regards it with curiosity. The room is wired for sound from the office, and Lilia’s ballet classes use the built in system, so he’s never understood why the stereo squatted in the corner like a relic. The speakers make a hollow sound when the power’s turned on, and then Yuuri presses play and the studio is immediately filled with a steady beat. 

Stepping back in front of the mirror, Yuuri glances back over his shoulder at Victor. “Don’t take your eyes off me,” he says, and begins to move.

It’s so fluid, Victor couldn’t stop watching if he wanted to. Yuuri’s body is like a snake, all spine and cartilage and hypnotic eyes. There are moments in the dance that Victor recognizes—the familiar tilt of a head, the ghost of a plie in the setup to a jump, arms high overhead. There _is_ ballet in this, but there’s also gymnastics and jazz and a sensual roll to the hips that Victor knows but can’t quite place.

Without even meaning to, his limbs start to follow his eyes, mimicking on a smaller scale the same movements Yuuri is sending him through the mirror, until by the end they’re a beat apart, Victor like a pale echo of everything Yuuri does.

As soon as the song finishes, it automatically starts again from the beginning, and Yuuri jogs over to the stereo to pause it.

“Do you want to try?” Hhe asks, biting his lip. “You can improvise where you don’t know what I did. That’s the nice thing about this type of dance.”

“I think I know,” Victor assures him. He flashes a smile that’s supposed to look confident. “I’m a quick study on this stuff.”

Yuuri presses play on the track, and Victor begins his run-through. First _this_ position, then the jump, and next—

He’s less than a minute in when the music cuts out.

“Sorry,” Yuuri says quickly when Victor turns to look at him. “It’s just- You’re too stiff.” He pauses, weighing his words, before declaring, “You’re still thinking of this like it’s ballet. There aren’t positions in modern dance, and it’s not so much about… making lines with your body. Your arms should be-” Yuuri waves his arms at his sides, in a motion that’s clearly meant to describe the movement, but falls flat.

“I’m not sure—” Victor begins.

At the same time Yuuri reaches toward him, asking, “Can I—?”

Victor nods and stills as Yuuri comes around to stand behind him, his eyes just visible over Victor’s shoulder in the studio mirrors. 

They’re not quite pressed together, but close enough that Victor can feel the warmth of Yuuri’s body through the sheer fabric of his practice clothes. Yuuri’s fingers skim down Victor’s arm, chasing skin until their hands can overlap. 

“Like this,” he says, and begins to guide the flow of Victor’s arm. His other hand presses into Victor’s waist, fingers perfectly slotted into the spaces between Victor’s ribs, as if they were built to fit.

They sway together, little points of contact like a brand on Victor’s skin. His body is moving at Yuuri’s guiding, but he wouldn’t say he’s learning much from this tutoring, unless the test to follow is about the way Yuuri’s breath crawls up the back of his neck, or the contact high of Victor’s heartbeat in his ears as their fingers intertwine. 

Somewhere in that moment, apparently, actual dancing happens. Victor misses it, if so. Even in the mirror, his eyes are glued to Yuuri’s, no attention on the choreography at all, and he’s taken by surprise when it all suddenly stops. He rocks back on his heels as Yuuri releases him, his body trying on its own to lean back into the heat. 

Their eyes meet again in the reflection, and Yuuri licks his lips, his face flushed. “Maybe—” he stops to clear his throat. “Maybe we should take a break and come back to this.”

“Sure.” Victor would probably agree to anything right now. Yuuri could have suggested they break into the dining hall and eat soft serve directly from the machine, and Victor would have said _Sure_.

Yuuri retrieves his backpack from one of the cubbies against the wall and settles onto a beanbag on the floor nearby. Victor goes to join him, but hesitates a few steps away. Yuuri has his head down, flipping through pages in his history text, so it takes him a moment to notice. He looks up expectantly.

Those puppy dog eyes can’t possibly be accidental.

“I don’t have my books,” Victor admits, smiling as he shrugs. “ _Someone_ blindfolded and kidnapped me.”

“I did not,” Yuuri says, but he’s not protesting that hard. “We could share? Or, we can go back to your room, if you need your own things.”

Victor’s room… Chris will be there, if they go back now, and then Victor will have to deal with the teasing and the histrionics over kicking him out yet again. 

“We can share.” He settles onto the matted section of floor beside Yuuri’s seat, folding his legs beneath him. Victor has to scoot forward on his knees a few inches to see the book clearly, even as Yuuri tilts it up for him.

It’s cold in the studio, the thermostat set for dancers and not studying, and Victor quickly finds his skin prickling from the chill, distracting him from the page. In an effort to warm up a little, he plucks the tie from his braid, letting his long hair spill out and cover his exposed arms.

Yuuri makes a strange noise, and Victor’s eyes cut over to him, searching for the cause, but Yuuri seems utterly focused on the text open in front of him. This era of history must be really engaging.

If only Victor were so focused. His attention keeps drifting from the words, preoccupied with quiet shudder of Yuuri’s breathing and the warm spot where their shoulders press together. After reading the same sentence four times, Victor gives up on the chapter. He reaches out to turn the page, and his fingers collide with Yuuri’s.

Their hands jump apart, the spark of touch searing on his fingertips.

“Next page?” Yuuri asks, breathy and uncertain.

Victor can only nod in response. That brush of their fingers, the way Yuuri’s sweat-streaked hair sticks to his skin and curls—it races through Victor like a brushfire. He _likes_ Yuuri. He _like-likes_ Yuuri, with a helpless sort of fluttering madness that Victor hasn't felt since his first year, when Cao Bin was still captain of the academy's hockey team and Victor found himself sitting rinkside at every match, holding his breath any time the man so much as glanced in his general direction. 

That's also, he now realizes, the place he knows Nishigori from. Hockey practice, where Victor had lurked regularly like a sad little stalker. No wonder Nishigori is so suspicious of him.

Yuuri is still staring intently at his text book, oblivious to the turmoil taking place beside him. He bites his lip in concentration, and Victor's chest hurts.

The worst part about liking Yuuri isn't the desperation, or the sudden obsession Victor is already developing with the tilt of Yuuri's body toward his own. The worst part is that Chris already guessed this would happen. Chris is right, and he'll never let Victor live it down.


	6. Chapter 6

One thing Victor is certain about, once he comes to terms with his big fat crush on his study buddy, is that wooing someone as accomplished as Yuuri absolutely requires a grand gesture of some kind. He’s already halfway through planning a big event— _how much work will it be to recruit the entire school band?_ he scribbles in the margins of his notebook. _Should I settle for just the chamber orchestra?_ —when Christophe peers over his shoulder and rips the spiral out of his hands.

Victor lunges for it, but Chris hops out of reach, jumping up to stand on top of his bed and push his five centimeters of height advantage to its absolute limits. 

“Don’t fight it,” Chris says, waving the notebook high over his head as Victor leaps for it again. “I’m trying to save you, you fool. Give it half a second of thought and then tell me if you really think Yuuri is the type who would want you to make a big public spectacle out of him?”

_Oh._ Victor’s arm drops. Chris has a point. How unlike him. “How come you never see this clearly when it comes to your own love life?” Victor asks, suspicious.

“Blinded by hormones,” Chris admits with a shrug. He flops down onto his bed and offers Victor the notebook back. “I’m not saying you can’t confess your feelings, but maybe in this case you should reconsider the theatrical displays. Or at least tone them down.”

“Yeah.” Victor takes the notebook back, shoulders drooping, and then falls back onto his own bed. As he tries to divine the romantic secrets of his popcorn ceiling, Chris shuffles around the room. The sound of his movement is almost soothing, until Victor realizes Chris is now pawing through _his_ closet.

Sitting up, he notices for the first time what his roommate is wearing. Pants which can’t possibly be real leather are molded to Chris’ thighs beneath a tunic-length shirt in a striking, shimmery shade of deep violet with laces up both sides.

“Excuse me,” Victor says, “but what the hell are you doing?”

“What?” Chris turns, holding Victor’s favorite soft sweater in his hands. His eyes are heavily lined with black, hints of silver sparkling on his cheeks. “It gets chilly out after dark. You can’t possibly expect me to wear my school blazer with this.”

“Of course not, but where are you even going in that outfit? A date?”

Chris shakes his head as he slips the sweater on to check the fit. It strains over his broader shoulders, but otherwise looks good. “There’s a whole group of graduating seniors going out to a club tonight, to shake off the pre-exam season jitters. Georgi invited you at lunch yesterday, remember?”

_Lunch yesterday_. Victor remembers… very little. He’d wanted to eat with Yuuri again, but then hadn’t been sure if that would be a good idea in the midst of everything happening in his head. Given all that, if he’d even heard Georgi’s question, he doesn’t remember answering either way.

Some of Victor’s conflict must show in his face, because Chris plants his hands on his hips. “Honestly,” he asks, “would you have wanted to come anyway? You still can if you get ready quickly, but this time of year…”

Of course. Victor has an essay due next week too. He’d nearly forgotten with everything else happening. He pastes on a smile, swinging his legs over the edge of the bed. “No, you’re right,” he tells Chris. “I have way too much to prepare for. You guys have fun without me.”

Chris hesitates, even though he’s well on his way out the door. “You sure?”

“Absolutely.” Victor waits, smiling, until Chris makes it all the way out of the room before allowing himself to fall back on the bed. It’s fine. It’s fine. He has more important things to worry about than parties and clubs. Still, knowing that does little to reduce the sting of not being included.

-

_Hey_ Victor types out on his phone quickly. It’s starting to drizzle, and there’s no cover outside Boitano Hall. _Come let me in_

There’s a pause as the phone registers the message as seen before “Fierce Kitten” replies _why_

_Need to use your kitchen_

Message seen. There’s no reply, so Victor hefts the cardboard box he carried over back into his arms to wait. He hopes it won’t start raining any harder. His box is already heavy, and it won’t hold up for long in a downpour.

The electric lock on the dormitory door whirrs, and the door pops open. Yuri pokes his head out first, eyes narrowed as he looks Victor up and down. 

“Bauer has a kitchen,” Yuri points out, eying the box in Victor’s arms. “What the hell is all that crap?”

“Your kitchen is nicer. Now can you let me in? My hair will frizz.”

Yuri doesn’t open the door any further, drawing out the moment as long as he can, then finally shoves it wide and steps back, allowing Victor inside. As soon as they’re in, Yuri stands on his tiptoes, reaching into the box and poking around. 

No wonder Yuri took so long to let him in—he looks like a drowned rat. Beneath his hoodie, his hair is still wet and limp from the shower, and he’s wearing nothing but soft black yoga pants, cat paw-shaped slippers, and an oversized black sweatshirt. The hoodie swallows him, making him look smaller than he already is.

For a beat, that’s endearing, and then the little bastard lifts a carton of eggs from Victor’s box. “Wait,” Yuri says, a grin spreading across his face as his tone walks the line between delight and disgust. “Are you actually _cooking_?”

“Yes?” Victor says, confused. “If you must know, I’m making a special meal for Yuuri.” Yuri makes a loud retching noise in response, and Victor rolls his eyes. “What did you think I needed a kitchen for?”

“I don’t know. Weird science experiments?”

Victor would prefer to pretend that guess is further from the mark than it is, but part of why he can’t use the kitchen in Bauer Hall for this is, in fact, a history of “weird science experiments.” Also, Boitano Hall is mostly first years, and first years generally cook for themselves less often than the other students.

He elects to ignore Yuri’s suggestion, and heads for the stairs. He’s at the first landing before he notices the soft shuffle of Yuri’s cat paws behind him. “Are you following me?”

“Yeah.” Yuri shrugs. “You’re _cooking_. It’s probably going to be funnier than watching Let’s Plays on YouTube.”

“Gee, thanks.” Victor hopes not, but then—no promises. No one in his family was much for home cooking, and the most effort Victor’s ever put into cooking for himself was along the lines of scrambled eggs or instant ramen. He’s not as much of a disaster as some of the stories he’s heard—he’s never burned water or set a pot on fire so far—but his experience level is definitely beginner.

Thank god for the internet. He’s been combing sites devoted to bento in his spare time for the past week, even cancelling valuable study time with Yuuri to avoid accidentally ruining the surprise, and he’s confident that he’s found the simplest versions possible on some of the items Yuuri mentioned. The only question is whether they’ll be simple enough for his limited ability.

Deep in the bowels of the dorms, the kitchen lies gleaming. As he expected, it looks like it’s never been used, and even the refrigerator is empty aside from some half-used condiment bottles and five different cartons of milk, each with a different student’s name scrawled out on the side in Sharpie. Victor shoves his box onto the counter and rummages through the cupboards overhead, searching out the battered communal pots and pans. He’s not sure which ones he’ll need, so he pulls down everything, even a muffin tin coated in a layer of dust. The muffin tin has probably been at the academy longer than Victor has.

Yuri hops up onto the kitchen island, watching Victor arrange his supplies with a wry twist to his mouth. However, the half-smile vanishes as Victor turns over the bag of rice he brought down and begins to reach the instructions on the back.

“Wait, you don’t even know how to cook _rice_?” Yuri snaps. “Are you serious right now?” Before Victor can respond, Yuri jumps back down from the table and pulls the bag right out of Victor’s hands. 

“Don’t think I’m going to do this all for you,” he grouches, picking up the pot and stalking over to the sink. “Or that this means I like the False Yuri. Just, no one deserves to eat scorched rice.” Yuri pauses, considering that, then adds, “Maybe JJ.”

“I don’t know who that is,” Victor says, but Yuri shows no signs of hearing him over the sound of running water as he fills the rice pot.

Aside from the rice, Yuri does stay true to his promise about keeping on the sidelines, though that apparently doesn’t include a ban on verbal suggestions or snarky comments. This isn’t quite how Victor pictured this morning going, and he makes certain Yuri knows that, pointedly reminding the younger boy multiple times that he _still needs to get dressed for class_ , but beneath it, Victor is glad for the company. Without Yuri here, he can see where all the work might have gotten boring. He could have easily gotten distracted and burned something without Yuri there, reminding him to set timers.

In the end, Victor thinks the finished product isn’t too shabby, though it’s not nearly as cute as the photos he saw online. 

Yuri, too, peers into the box as Victor puts on the final touches and pronounces it, “Not as much of a failure as I’d hoped.”

Thank god for that. It had been a long process of stocking up, begging, bartering, and in some cases _stealing_ the supplies Victor needed for this. The school kitchens probably won’t miss a single bag of rice, but he still feels guilty over it. When he’s famous and successful, he’ll have to donate the cost back.

In the end, the test egg he cut open has a green ring around the yolk, his attempt at tonkatsu has pale, soggy breading, and he sliced open the pad of his thumb while trying to make apple bunnies. But, once it’s all arranged and spiced up visually with some vegetables to add color, it strikes a reasonable resemblance to a traditional bento.

Yuri pulls out his phone and snaps a picture before Victor can stop him. It’s probably going into a group chat that Victor is better off not knowing about, so he decides not to ask questions he won’t like the answer to, and then Yuri hops off the table once more, landing quietly on his little cat feet.

“I’m going to get dressed,” Yuri says. Some people might wish their friend luck after that, but from Yuri it comes out as, “Hope you don’t give the piggy food poisoning.” Close enough. Victor places the lid on his bento, wraps it up in a spare scarf since he doesn’t have a proper lunch bag, and sticks it in the bottom of his satchel before heading to breakfast.

-

Mr. Cialdini furrows his enormous brow when Victor asks to be excused for lunch five minutes early. It’s meant to be an expression of concern, but it always looks like his eyebrows are trying to fly away and escape his face. Victor can’t blame them.

Though he’s clearly suspicious of Victor’s motivations, the teacher gives in, as Victor knew he would. That’s his secret, after all—despite all the ways in which Victor flaunts little things like dress code, he’s a model student in terms of grades and attendance. The only reason a teacher could tell him no for something like this would be pure pettiness, and Mr. Cialdini isn’t the type. 

As soon as he has the go-ahead, Victor gathers his things and tears down the hall. He has to catch Yuuri before he gets to the dining hall today, before he can buy lunch on his own, because for some reason Victor’s subconscious is quite inistant that Yuuri won’t take the bento Victor made unless he has no other option. 

Unfortunately, Victor may have been a little eager in his planning. He runs across the campus, dodging a few stray ducks that are making their slow waddle to the school’s fountains for bath time, and reaches the dining hall with more than enough time to spare. In fact, he gets there not only before Yuuri, but before _anyone_. With the doors to the cafeteria still tightly locked, Victor is forced to wait outside, hopping from one foot to the other to stay warm, because he thought it was a good idea to wear short sleeves today despite the cool spring breeze.

After a couple minutes, students begin to slowly filter out from the other buildings—first a trickle of eager first-years, then a swell as the lunch chimes finally begin to ring out from the clock tower.

For a better view, Victor hops up to the top of the concrete barrier next to the dining hall steps, peering out over the green grass dotted with students in uniform. Never before has he noticed how many people at this school have black hair.

It’s that girl in Yuuri’s group, Yuuko, that gives away his position, her bright pink bow bobbing along at the base of her ponytail. It’s a cute look. Victor wonders if he could get the same effect on his own hair by recycling an old tie. He files that note away for later use. 

Yuuri has his head turned to the side, listening to a story Phichit is telling. Judging by the boy’s giant hand gestures, the story involves some type of explosion, but it could simply be an _emotional_ immolation.

Victor hops down from the stairs with his bag and skips across the lawn to meet them. “Yuuri!” he calls out. “Hang on a minute!”

Seeing Victor jogging toward him, Yuuri’s eyes widen. He tenses, expecting a tackle, but Victor’s arms are too full of his precious cargo to go in for a hug today—at least, not yet. If his plan works, there will be plenty of time for hugging later.

As Victor skids to a halt, Phichit’s eyes slide from Yuuri to Victor, and back. “I’ll leave you two alone,” he says with a smirk. Nishigori is glaring again, but with Yuuko on one of his arms and Phichit on the other, the hockey player is quickly towed away.

“Is something wrong?” Yuuri asks. He’s frowning, which is the only thing wrong at the moment. Frowning is absolutely not on Victor’s agenda for this lunch.

Victor digs into his satchel and produces the bento box, artfully wrapped in a pink scarf threaded with silver tinsel. He had tried to tie a big bow at the top, but the scarf is too soft and it’s flopped into an artless mound instead.

Yuuri takes the package gingerly with both hands, looking down with confusion swirling in his eyes. “Victor, what—”

“Open it,” Victor urges, tugging the end of the sloppy bow as a hint.

Yuuri pulls at the end of the scarf as if he expects the contents to pop out and bite him, wincing as the scarf falls away. He gapes when the little bento box is revealed. 

Victor had to bribe Georgi to lend his Amazon Prime to this endeavour. A bento box is not something one finds just lying around the grounds of a school, even one as fancy and international as Nepela. The box is nothing special, a square bamboo thing with the pinkish outline of a flower in one corner of the lid. It’s not nearly as cute as some of the designs Victor saw online—which he may now be drooling over forever—but he was working with a very anemic budget for all this.

Yuuri carefully lifts the top off the box, and his eyes widen as he takes in the first of the two layers. “Is that tonkatsu?” he whispers, reverent. 

“Yes!” Victor claps. He’s not only made food—he’s made _recognizable_ food. “The other thing you mentioned—katsudon?—seemed a little out of my league, but I thought maybe this would be something you like as we—”

“Did you make all this yourself?” Yuuri is still gaping, clutching the box tight to his chest. “For _me_?”

“No, for the other Japanese boy I like,” Victor says, teasing, but then Yuuri’s face falls and Victor has to laugh. “Of course it’s for you, Yuuri. _Please._ Who else would I make bento for— Nishigori?”

Even Yuuri has to laugh at little at that image, his cheeks flushing lightly as he ducks his head. “This is… This is too much.” For a flash, Victor thinks Yuuri means the whole gesture is too much. His hesitation must show in his face, because Yuuri quickly corrects himself. “I mean, it’s too much food for one person! I don’t want to waste anything…”

“We could share?” Victor suggests tentatively, as if that wasn’t his devious plan all along.

Smiling, Yuuri nods, and he leads Victor across the lawn to his usual bench. Most of the other students are already in the dining hall, fighting over resources, but a few still filtering in give Victor and Yuuri curious glances. No matter what happens now, the gossip will be all over the school by end of day. Victor will never hear the end of it if Yuuri turns him down.

They settle in on the bench, and Victor retrieves a couple sets of utensils from his bag. There had been a “chopsticks in hair” phase a couple years ago that he’s not particularly proud of now, but at least it means he won’t look woefully inept with them in front of Yuuri… He hopes. Yuuri sets out the two layers of the bento between them, and Victor thrills. There’s this soft little smile on Yuuri’s lips as he looks at the food, and it’s so _gentle_ that Victor’s breath catches in his chest. 

“Wow,” Yuuri says softly. “I still can’t believe you made all of this. I didn’t know you could cook!”

“I don’t usually,” Victor admits with a shrug. “But I wanted to do something special for you. I’m sure it isn’t half as good as what your mother would make you, but—”

“It’s perfect,” Yuuri insists. He hasn’t even tried any yet, but after saying that he digs in, popping a slice of pork into his mouth and chewing with great relish. “ _Perfect_ ,” he repeats. “Honestly, I… I didn’t know if I’d ever have this again. Thank you.”

It looks like he needs a hug, and it wouldn’t be their first, but suddenly Victor is shy. Now that he’s in this position—really about to ask Yuuri out, and knowing that he likes him—the idea of it gathers new meaning. Instead, he bumps their shoulders together lightly, nudging Yuuri playfully like he would Yuri or Mila. “Don’t be silly,” he chides. “We’re only a couple months away from graduation now. You’ll be back home, eating your mother’s food in no time.”

That’s not what Victor wants to think about, today or ever. The end is coming, soon enough—but no, not yet. Months away still. They have time.

“I guess.” Yuuri’s eyes have gone quiet, turned inward. He seems solemn, so Victor nudges him again, pulling him back to the present. When Yuuri looks up, Victor plucks an apple bunny from the box, bouncing it through the air before popping it into his own mouth. Yuuri shakes his head, but some of his smile is back.

“Feeling nostalgic again?” Victor asks. Yuuri shakes his head.

“Thinking about home,” he admits. “But not in that way. Back home is… there’s not a lot of opportunity for young people. Most of the kids born in the area leave for school or work eventually, and they never come back.” Yuuri takes the end of Victor’s scarf in his hands, twisting it absently. “There’s so much pressure to succeed, but also to come home. After I got into the academy, sometimes it feels like the whole town is watching my every movement, waiting to see where I go from here.”

They both sit quietly. The only sound percolating around them is the chirping of the birds in the tree above. Distantly, there’s the hum of a groundskeeper mowing the school’s many lawns. 

“I know what you mean,” Victor says.

At the same time, Yuuri says, “Sorry—” and they both stop, stumbling over each other.

“What were you going to say?”

“No, I’m fine. You go first.”

Yuuri ducks his head, peering up at Victor through his fringe. The world is deprived of something wonderful, that Yuuri hasn’t chosen to grow his hair longer. “I wanted to apologize,” he says. “Because I went off on a tangent, and I’m ignoring this wonderful food you made.”

“Hmm, you’re right.” Victor grins and scoots the food a little closer to Yuuri. Turning, he pulls up his feet to sit with his legs folded, sideways on the narrow bench and facing Yuuri. “We can’t let this go to waste. More eating, less talking.”

“More of both,” Yuuri counters, leveling his chopsticks at Victor with a serious expression. “I still want to hear what you were saying too. ‘I know what you mean’?”

“Ah.” Victor had kind of hoped they could slide right past that. It’s not something he normally talks about, not even with Chris really, but then, Yuuri is special. Victor isn’t trying to get Chris to be his boyfriend. That almost makes it worse, though—he’s about to expose himself in front of the one person whose opinion matters to him the most. He might as well be standing naked in Yuuri’s front yard right now. 

“I’ll talk,” he says, then nudges the box closer to Yuuri again. “You eat.” Victor waits until Yuuri picks up another piece of pork with his chopsticks and takes a bite, then steels himself to continue. 

“Coming here on scholarship,” Victor begins slowly, rolling each word through his mind with care, “there was a lot of expectation from day one: my family, who had faith to send me here, and Lilia, who had such high hopes for my dancing, but also the doubters and the naysayers here, the ones I felt a need to prove wrong.”

“That was what started with all the—” He breaks off, gesturing to his mascara-coated lashes and glittery green nails, the hair, the whole business. Victor’s voice gains an edge as he remembers the first days on campus and the moment he’d stepped into breakfast with a fresh coat of nail polish. “I wanted to not only be a success, but to make myself _impossible_ for them to ignore.”

“You’re certainly that,” Yuuri murmurs, then flushes when Victor beams at the words. “Everyone knows who Victor Nikiforov is now.”

“Yeah,” Victor sighs. He picks up a piece of tonkatsu, ignoring his chopsticks in favor of fingers. It’s lukewarm, and the breading is definitely soggy, but it tastes pretty good. “I’m afraid that’s the problem. I used to _like_ fashion. It used to be fun to get ready in the morning. Now,” he shrugs. “It’s just one more thing that everyone expects from me, like the grades and the lead roles in the ballet.”

Yuuri’s hum sounds skeptical, and Victor tilts his head. Yuuri picks at the food next to him, not meeting Victor’s eyes. “Maybe so,” he says. “But you’re more than just what others expect of you, Victor. You do all of these incredible things, but then you also do something like this.” Yuuri gestures between them, and Victor isn’t sure if he means the food or just _them_. “And it proves that somehow, there’s still more.”

When Yuuri raises his head, the flecks of amber in his eyes catch fire. “No matter if you meet expectations, or exceed them, or turn them upside down, you’re still a person that others would love to know. That’s true even if you stopped being Victor Nikiforov and just wanted to be… Victor.”

A smile slowly spreads across Victor’s face, pulling as his cheeks until they start to ache. He edges closer to Yuuri. “Really? Is that Victor a person _you_ want to know?”

“Of course!” Yuuri’s face is still set with determination. “You don’t have to be Lilia’s prince or the best student in the school to be my friend. I’d like you even if you were bald and wore nothing at all!”

The image is funny and more than a little horrifying, but also exactly what Victor had hoped to hear. With a surge of joy running through his veins, Victor leans over the bento box. He means to kiss Yuuri’s cheek—he’s not _that_ forward!—but Yuuri turns his head at just that moment and, electric, their lips brush.

They both gasp. Yuuri’s eyes are wide, his hand fisted in his crisp uniform shirt as if reaching for his heart. “What?” Yuuri says, lips still parted as he reaches up to touch his own mouth. There’s a sheen on his lower lip where Victor’s gloss smeared. “Wait, _what_?”

Victor has to laugh, not at Yuuri’s confusion, but because he’s so perfectly surprised in that moment and so utterly _Yuuri_. “Hi,” Victor says. He extends his hand, palm up, and waits until Yuuri’s fingers tentatively touch his own. “I’m Victor. I made you lunch because I think you’re cute. Do you want to go out with me?”

Yuuri’s response is mumbled and his face is bright red, and Victor can barely hear him over the ringing in his ears—or maybe that was just the lunch bell—but he’s pretty sure there was a “yes” in there.

There better have been, considering half the school just walked out of the dining hall to see Victor throw himself across a bench and tackle Yuuri onto the grass.


	7. Chapter 7

The next couple months are a swirl of delight. Victor can’t remember being so happy in a very long time—not since before he left his home and came to Nepela Academy, certainly. His classes are little more than background noise, a buzzing drone that sets up a wall, dividing out the times Victor gets to spend with Yuuri—his _boyfriend_ , Yuuri.

Breakfast and lunch they eat together, out on their bench beneath the trees, enjoying the incipient summer heat. Since they both have roommates, they rarely get time together in true privacy, but the warm sun in the afternoons leads to unbuttoned shirts and rolled sleeves, a tempting sheen of sweat gathering at the base of Yuuri’s throat, or a pleasing flush that’s about more than the temperature as Victor leans in to kiss him over their textbooks when they study.

And then there’s the dancing, too. Minako stops leaving them alone in the studio once they’re officially dating, like a chaperoning old aunt watching over their shoulder every week for a hint of impropriety, but she can’t stop them from touching or holding each other close when they practice— Yuuri’s fingers brushing exposed skin at the base of Victor’s spine when he teases Yuuri with crop tops and increasingly tiny shorts. 

The clothes work—very well—for more weeks that Victor had dared hope, until the day that Minako finally snaps, seeing the word THICC embroidered across the back of Victor’s deep blue shorts. She comes back a moment later and throws a uniform skirt at him from the lost and found box in the office.

Thankfully, Victor already has plenty of practice with looking indecent in a knee-length skirt, but he reins it in a bit after that. If Minako decides to kick them out, they’ll lose their only space to dance together. 

So he’s in relatively normal practice clothes—black leggings, ballet slippers, and a sequin-studded neon green tank top—on the day he passes out right in the middle of practice.

Well, he doesn’t completely pass out. It’s not like he swoons and hits the floor or forces Yuuri to catch him dramatically—although he would enjoy that very much, and he’s pretty sure Yuuri is more than strong enough to carry him bridal style to the nurse’s office if Victor needed it—but he’s already in Yuuri’s arms, finishing a spin, when his head continues right on twirling, his eyes fuzz over a bit and he… slumps.

“Victor?” 

It’s only for a second, but Yuuri’s voice is climbing toward panic, his fingertips pressing hard into Victor’s biceps as Victor blinks, shaking his head to ward the darkness off. “I’m fine,” he murmurs, his brain still wrapped in cotton. When his vision clears, he can see Minako watching, already halfway out the office door to check on him.

“I’m _fine_ ,” he repeats more firmly. “I just got a little dizzy on the twirling.”

Minako doesn’t stop frowning. Yuuri still has Victor in his arms, holding him up, but that part Victor isn’t going to complain about.

“Why don’t you two come sit in the office for a minute?” Minako says, grabbing her keys from the desk. “I’ll go grab you a Sprite from the faculty lounge.”

Before Victor can protest once again that he’s perfectly all right, Yuuri is nodding and thanking her, steering Victor over toward the little office until he’s safely enveloped in Lilia’s big, plush desk chair. 

“Sit,” Yuuri says, cutting Victor off before he can get further than parting his lips. Yuuri’s tone brooks no argument. He puts a hand on Victor’s sternum, as if he plans to hold him in place, but the touch is gentle. Beneath his fingers, Victor’s heart races. “We can wait here until Minako gets back.”

“But we weren’t done with practice.”

“Victor,” Yuuri sighs. His lips are twisted into a slight grimace, faint lines embedding themselves in his forehead. “It doesn’t matter. This is just for fun, remember?”

His hand drops away from Victor’s chest and immediately Victor wants to snatch it back, but Yuuri isn’t going far. He perches on the top of Lilia’s desk—oh, Lilia would _hate_ that—across from Victor. He almost manages to look casual, draping himself across old programs and attendance sheets, but the worry hasn’t left his face.

“Don’t tell me you’re fine again,” Yuuri says, nudging at Victor’s shin with the toe of his dance shoes. “Even if you hadn’t fainted, I’d know better. You’ve been looking worn out all week; why don’t you just tell me what’s wrong?” 

Victor tells Yuuri a lot. He tells Yuuri things he’s never confessed to his mother or Lilia, much less anyone else. Beneath the stately old oaks on campus, he’s whispered more than one closely-guarded secret into the curve of Yuuri’s ear. But saying things out loud—it makes them real.

As Victor squirms, Yuuri only watches, solemn and waiting, his hands folded on his lap. Under his attention, Victor snaps. It comes out in a rush of breath. “I got a C on my math quiz,” he admits. “Not even a B, a _C_.” Plenty of students would have been fine with that, but not Victor. No. He doesn’t fall behind; he’s not allowed to. Almost four full years he’s done at Nepela, and not once has he scored lower than a B before this week.

Yuuri’s shoulders visibly slump, and Victor’s first thought is that Yuuri, too, is disappointed. “I knew this would happen,” Yuuri mutters, and Victor’s heart clenches. Yuuri lowers his head, hiding beneath the fringe of his dark hair, and Victor finds himself straining forward, his whole body reaching for a glimpse of Yuuri’s eyes to check his expression.

On his knees, Yuuri’s hands ball into fists. “You’ve taken on too much,” he says. “I’m pulling you down.”

“What? Yuuri, no—”

“Yes,” Yuuri says firmly. “How can you say no? Before me, you had a full schedule, but you did fine, and then I came along and added these extra dance lessons and the tutoring—”

“I asked for those things!” Victor exclaims, but Yuuri is still going.

“And then we… started seeing each other.”

“I _love_ that,” Victor insists. He reaches out to wrap both of his hands around one of Yuuri’s own, sliding forward in the chair. “It’s exactly what I always wanted. _You_ are exactly what I wanted—”

“Victor.” Yuuri’s voice is deadly calm. When he raises his head, at last meeting Victor’s gaze head on, his eyes are placid and still as a frozen pond. “Let’s take a break.”

The sound that flutters from Victor’s throat is not English. It’s not even Russian. 

Silence falls hard around them. Yuuri’s hand doesn’t move to return Victor’s touch.

“A break?” Victor repeats. Hope creeps into his tone. “That means temporary, right? Just— Just until after finals?” Silent, Yuuri shrugs. “We don’t— Don’t do this and claim it’s for me,” Victor says, suddenly waspish. “I can handle everything just fine. I don’t need you to _save_ me.”

“You can’t pull yourself apart over this,” Yuuri says, flat. He pulls his hand back, withdrawing even that slight permission for touch. “Or at least, I can’t be part of it. You’ll do better without me pulling you down.”

Victor’s been told he’s very articulate. He speaks three languages fluently, and a few more well enough to get around. At the moment, he’s at a loss to find his words in any tongue.

Outside the office, the door clicks as Minako lets herself back inside, the soft scuff of her trainers on the polished wood floor their only warning that she’s returned. Popping her head into the room, she holds up a green plastic bottle like a gold medal. 

“Everything okay in here?” she asks, reading the tension in the room.

“Fine,” Yuuri says. He slides off the desk, landing lightly on his toes, then passes her, heading back into the studio. 

Victor quietly accepts the soda, twisting off the cap to take a swig while Minako watches. The cold, carbonated sugar burns his throat and makes his teeth hurt. His eyes are burning, hot with tears he can’t quite manage to release yet—not in front of Ms. Okukawa for sure.

“Thank you,” he murmurs, screwing the lid back onto the bottle. “I’m going to… take a break. Call it a day.”

“Good idea,” Minako says, but her forehead is creased with concern. She can probably tell something’s wrong, but it’s not Victor’s place to explain. She’s _Yuuri’s_ teacher. 

Victor doesn’t bother to change or towel off before grabbing his satchel, swinging it over his shoulders. As he leaves the studio without saying goodbye, he can see Yuuri walking over to the stereo in the corner. The sound-proof door closes behind Victor, cutting off the first notes of the song, but through the tiny window, he watches as Yuuri begins to dance—alone again.

The walk back to Bauer Hall seems to last a century, though he knows it’s only ten minutes. The world Victor moves through has an air of unreality, and the trees and figures on the grounds are blurred at the edges, swirling like a dreamscape. He’s spent half his life making plans for the future down to every conceivable detail, but once again, Yuuri Katsuki has managed to surprise him.

When he reaches his room, he finds Chris already there, sitting on Victor’s bed with his feet propped up on the footboard as he paints his toenails silver. Chris freezes when Victor walks in, caught in the act. Bastard. Victor had asked him months ago if he spilled nail polish on Victor’s bedspread, and he had vehemently denied it, the liar.

Aside from a stab of annoyance, Victor can’t muster the energy to be mad. The comforter is already ruined from last time. Chris can’t make it much worse. Victor doesn’t even bother with shooing him off the bed—he drops his bag on the floor and then flops over onto Chris’ bed instead, burying his face in the pillow.

It smells like Chris’ shampoo and—Victor wrinkles his nose— _Axe body spray_. Chris must be dating another rugby player.

“Oh no,” Chris gasps. God, this was a mistake. Victor’s not sure he can take Chris’s response right now. “I know that look. Did you just get _dumped_?”

“No,” Victor snaps. He rolls onto his back, throwing an arm over his eyes to shield them from the overhead lights. “...We’re on a break.”

“Please. I watched Friends. I know what that means.” The bed dips as Chris joins him, perching on the edge. “Do you need anything? Ice cream? Bad horror movies? Wine?”

“Where would you get wine?” Victor asks, then drops his arm to look Chris in the eye. “Please don’t take that as a request.”

“I have my ways,” Chris responds, cryptic. Although his voice retains the same teasing quality it always has, his golden brown eyes are full of genuine concern. “I can’t believe that idiot broke up with _you_. I’m a little impressed with his guts—I admit it.”

Victor heaves a sigh. Not much has changed. Even worried Chris is a bit of an ass when it comes to Yuuri. “I got a poor grade on a quiz in Cialdini’s class,” Victor says. He skips the part where he maybe fainted a little, not wanting Chris to overreact. “Yuuri thinks it’s because he’s distracting me from my studies.”

“ _Everyone_ failed that quiz,” Chris says. “It was ridiculous.” That’s true. As disappointed as Victor had been with his C, it was one of the higher grades in the class. But then Chris adds. “I think Yuuri has the right idea, though.”

Victor smacks him—lightly—on the thigh. “Aren’t you supposed to be _comforting me_? God. How many break-ups have I watched you sob through now?”

“More than enough,” Chris says flatly. “But you’re not me, and I’m not you, and I know eventually you’ll want to hear the truth, not just nice platitudes about how your ex is a fool who doesn’t appreciate you—nice as I find those myself.” Glancing away, he adds, “And, being honest, Yuuri _did_ appreciate you. I never doubted that.”

Gathering himself, Chris straightens his spine and looks at Victor once more. “But he’s still right. You’ve taken on way too much for your last semester. Your social life was already in a shambles from all your overworking. Your friends haven’t seen you outside classes in _months_ , and, frankly, your investment in ‘tutoring’ Yuuri was ridiculous from the beginning.”

“What’s so ridiculous about wanting to help someone?” Victor asks, wounded.

But Chris only rolls his eyes. “Yuuri’s one of the best students in the school, and if you paid any attention to the names below your own on the list of test scores, you’d have known that already.” Chris pauses, considering, then adds, “If you put an offer like that to _me_ , I’d be insulted, so it was pretty apparent from day one that Yuuri had a thing for you.”

Victor hadn’t _missed_ that Yuuri was a good student—at least not entirely, but… It does put some things into perspective, hearing it from Chris. He’s just not ready to admit that yet. 

Chris doesn’t force him to. Instead, he pats Victor on the knee once before hopping up from the bed and retrieving his phone from his dresser. “Now, fix your eyeliner and get changed. We’re going to Georgi’s and you’re getting the full breakup treatment from the master—popcorn, sugar, _Legally Blonde_ , the whole kaboodle.

Victor has to put his arm back over his face to hide the smile.

-

The last few weeks of the year slink by like a tiger pacing the floor of his cage. Victor’s routine goes back to what it always was, a cycle of books and makeup and dance with hurried meals between, and all of it with an overhanging awareness of the places where Yuuri is missing. 

His first day back at the lunch table is his biggest shock. Although Victor is late to get his food, as usual, he arrives to find not just one empty chair waiting, but two. “Where’s Yuri?” he asks as he settles into his old seat. 

Mila barely looks up from her phone long enough to nod up the hall. A couple tables away, Victor spots Yuri’s familiar cat-eared hoodie. He’s leaning halfway onto the table, pointing out something in a book to two younger boys Victor doesn’t know—one with close-cropped black hair, and the other blond with a bright red streak. 

Somehow, Victor’s missed so many lunches with his squad that he also missed Yuri making friends his own age. He had hoped that would happen eventually, but at the same time, he’s upset that it happened without him noticing. 

He sees Yuuri only in flashes, passing one another in the hallway or on the lawn. Victor knows the places Yuuri haunts so well that it’s tempting to go find him—in the studio after school, or out on the bench at lunch, or even in the room he shares with Phichit. The last option would be easy these days, since Phichit and Chris have started dating again. To their credit, they’ve been going out of their way not to shove it in Victor’s face, but they’re hardly subtle when Phichit winds up taking Yuri’s old space at their table.

But Yuuri thought they needed a break, and Victor can’t force him to change that. He can only do his best in this last week and hope that after finals they can… something.

The whole concept of graduation doesn’t feel right to him. Victor can’t imagine it, so he tries not thinking about it, instead concentrating as best he can on the now.

He’s in ballet, practicing for the senior recital, when everything comes to a head. It was Lilia who brought about his admittance to Nepela, so it’s fitting that it’s Lilia who changes his life again in the end.

Victor is mid-jeté when the music cuts off abruptly. He lands on his toe and stops, watching as the others mill about, shifting from foot to foot as they await correction. 

“A break,” Lilia says sharply, and Victor can feel the room exhale. “Water. Stretching. Everyone but Mr. Nikiforov.” She crooks her finger at Victor, her brow raising to a sharp curve as she passes him on the way to the office. “Come.”

Victor snags his water bottle and follows her. His hair, braided, is cemented to his neck with sweat. Spring is at its peak outside, creeping toward a languid summer heat, and the ballet studio has no windows. Even in very little clothing, the movement swelters this time of year, and Victor envies Mila with her fluffy little bob cut and the first-year girls with their pixies. 

Lilia motions for Victor to shut the office door as they enter, and he complies. She settles into her chair, and he drops his eyes to the floor. He can still see Yuuri’s phantom in here, perched on the desk and watching him. _You can’t pull yourself apart over this._

“You’re falling apart,” Lilia says, echoing the ghost in the corner. Victor’s head snaps up. “I see it every year—seniors, one foot out the door, only thinking of the next thing. I thought you would do better.”

“It’s not like that,” Victor protests, but Lilia cuts him off with a gesture. She leans back in her office chair, both hands curled around the ends of the arm rests, a queen reclining on a plastic throne.

“You are still my student for a few more days,” Lilia says. “And I expect my students to not be _lazy_. Remember that you must be hungry for this. You have a long road ahead to achieve your goals, and many others nipping at your heels, ready for your place.”

His _goals_. But they never were his, not in this room. It was always Lilia that envisioned Victor as her prince, the one who would go on to join a renowned ballet just as she once had. 

Victor had just wanted to get a good education, a ticket out. 

Lilia is still waiting for a response, watching him closely. Victor doesn’t correct her assumption, only thanks her for her time, kisses her hand as always, and returns to the studio. He returns his water bottle to his cubby with a new resolve brewing in his spine. As he passes through the other students, their energetic gossip falls into hushed tones, then silence. 

Victor pulls the elastic from the end of his braid, freeing his hair to fall long and loose around him, hiding a small smile. Everyone in this room thinks they know what Victor wants. They know exactly what he’s going to do next. But the truth is—they haven’t got any idea.

The best part is, neither does he. Not yet.

-

A few days prior to graduation, the whole school holds an end of year assembly. Although each class receives their own awards at the ceremony, the primary purpose is to prepare the seniors for graduation—announcing awards and honors in advance and highlighting those who already have jobs, travel, or universities lined up for their first steps into adulthood. 

When the bell rings for the assembly, Victor takes his time. “Go ahead without me,” he urges Chris, who’s still lingering in their doorway, even though they both know Phichit is waiting for him. 

“Are you sure?” Chris asks again. Victor rolls his eyes, exaggerating the movement, and Chris huffs. “Fine, fine. I’ll save you a seat.”

Of course he will. 

Once Chris is gone, Victor shrugs into his blazer and straightens his tie. He walks to the window, looking out at the bright green front lawn and watching as students stream from the dormitories and outer buildings, all making their way to the auditorium for the presentation. Fondly, Victor looks at the other stately red brick buildings, the towering oak trees outside, and even the battered, scratched drywall on his room’s windowsill. 

There are still spiderweb cracks in one of the window panes from Chris throwing rocks, whisper-shouting in French for Victor to come sneak him back in after hours.

It’s not the last time he’ll see this place—there are still a final few days for farewells left—but this may be his last chance to be alone with his memories. He has few regrets. Hopefully, by today’s end, he’ll have less.

As the crowd thins out on the lawn below, Victor slips on his dress shoes and at last leaves to join the others. Although he waited as long as he could, a few students are still running behind, rushing to make it up the cobblestone path before the auditorium doors are locked. One of the younger boys spots Victor coming toward him and stops, does an obvious second look, then freezes completely, his eyes gone wide.

Victor, smiling, gives him a little wave. The first year looks like he’s seen a ghost. It’s a good sign.

The pathway leading to the auditorium widens before it meets the few stone steps, and Victor ascends them like a dias. The double doors have fallen closed, so he heaves the solid oak open to step inside. Conversation buzzes on the air as the classes mingle, exchanging congratulations and sharing plans for the upcoming summer break, but as Victor walks up the center aisle, the discussion quiets. Someone audibly gasps.

Up ahead, Chris turns to spot him and waves, patting the empty seat behind him with a wide smile that Victor returns. There’s a muffled whimper from one of the younger girls nearby, and Victor turns, winking at her. At the same time, he runs a hand through his newly-short hair, tossing his bangs back out of his eyes. The poor girl turns bright red.

The room is silent as Victor slides down the row to his chair, and there’s a flurry of activity as he sits.

“You _bastard_ ,” Phichit says, leaning across Chris’s lap and eying Victor from top to toe. Despite his harsh words, his eyes are sparkling with joy. “You’ve ruined all the awards. No one will be able to talk about anything else.”

Victor only smiles, bowing his head to stare down at his hands, folded in his lap. His haircut is the most dramatic change, but it’s not alone. Today, there is no makeup, no modified uniform or pink vinyl boots. Today, Victor is in a normal boys’ uniform—tie and all—wearing loafers and a class pin like anyone else. 

On his knees, his fingernails drum out the beat of the school song, his nails still painted gold. 

The head teachers all begin to file onto the stage, taking chairs at the rear, and then Headmaster Feltsman himself appears, ascending the podium to tap his microphone, the thump-thump of his finger echoing over the aging speakers in the hall. 

“Good afternoon,” he grumbles. The headmaster always looks like he just bit into a lemon. It can make for some entertaining presentations, when he attempts to seem kindly but his face says, _I’ve just smelt garbage_. “Welcome to the end of year assembly. I must start by saying how proud I am of each and every one of you…”

Two minutes in and already the old man is sweating. Bored, Victor tunes it out, waiting to hear his own name. He raises his head to scan the other faces around him and spots Yuri across the aisle with his new friends, but no sign of Yuuri or even Mila. They must be sitting behind him, but it’s rude to turn around in these presentations.

The headmaster drones on, and Victor lets himself lean back in his chair. His toes are cramped, pressed up against the hard leather of his loafers. It’s been a few years since he last wore them, and his feet must have grown a bit after. Damn. No wonder he never bothered.

“For our senior class,” Feltsman begins, and Victor tunes in once more. “We have a great many excellent achievements to honor this year, not the least of which is our most coveted honor: valedictorian.” Victor straightens as other students nearby turn to look at him again. He’s won the top spot every year since he arrived, unstoppable, and they all know what to expect by now.

Feltsman picks up his index card, squinting down at the name printed there as if he’s never seen it before. He holds it close to his face, then moves it away slowly. The old man needs glasses. He clears his throat.

“Our senior valedictorian this year… _Yuuri Katsuki_.”

There’s a gasp in the crowd, then a murmur of excitement. Ignoring politeness, several students in the rows ahead whip around, searching for Victor’s face to see how he reacts.

It takes Victor a moment for it to sink in. Not him. _Yuuri_ — _his_ Yuuri. 

A grin splits his face, and Victor leaps to his feet, throwing his arms up as he lets out a whoop of delight, then begins to clap. At his cue, Chris stands too, then Phichit beside him, Georgi, and so on. Soon, most of the room is clapping, and Victor is still going so hard his hands are beginning to ache. Someone whistles, and finally the man of the hour stumbles out into the aisle, making his way to the stage.

Yuuri’s head is down and he’s bright red with embarrassment, but he’s smiling, and Victor’s chest aches to see him. He looks so happy. Victor’s streak may be broken, but it’s been broken in the best way possible, and even as the others slowly retake their seats, Victor stays standing until the very end, right up until Yuuri ascends the three little steps and walks onto the stage. Only then does Victor let Chris’s hand on his blazer hem pull him back down to earth. 

When the commotion stops, the headmaster steps up to the podium once more, straining back to reach the microphone. “As you probably expect, this means your senior class salutatorian is Victor Nikiforov.”

The room erupts again as Victor stands. Thrilled, he makes a big show of it—waving and blowing kisses to the audience, and especially to Yuri, who scowls and folds his arms in disgust at the display. From previous years, Victor knows he’ll be handed a certificate and he’ll shake the headmaster’s hand and all that, but as he steps onto the stage, he only has eyes for Yuuri, who watches Victor approach, biting his lip to hold in his smile.

Victor steps up next to him, ignoring whatever vapid speech the headmaster has moved on to make, and dips his head toward Yuuri’s ear. “I’m so proud of you,” he murmurs, and he means it, along with a whole host of other things beneath that—words he’s not quite ready to say. Instead, he puts the feelings into the spaces between these words, where they fit. “You deserve this.”

Yuuri no longer restrains his smile. It breaks free, illuminating the entire auditorium. “I wouldn’t be here without you,” Yuuri says, and Victor shakes his head, about to say _No. No, you would have done it anyway,_ but his voice catches in his throat at the feeling of Yuuri’s fingers, tentative as they slide along the inside of Victor’s palm, twining their hands together in full view of the entire stage.

“Are we not on a break anymore?” Victor whispers, just to be sure. 

In response, Yuuri turns his head until his mouth is pressed to Victor’s ear. His breath crawls up Victor’s spine as he whispers, “I like your new hair.” He squeezes Victor’s hand. “It suits you.”

The auditorium rafters are echoing with applause at whatever announcement Headmaster Feltsman just made. There are a whole line of teachers seated on chairs behind where Victor and Yuuri stand, and the entire academy is filling the seats ahead of them, staring up at the stage.

None of it makes a bit of difference as Victor tugs Yuuri’s arm, tipping him forward, and presses their lips together in full view of the headmaster, Lilia, and the rest of the world. They’re definitely not on a break any more, from the way Yuuri’s fingers grip the short hair at the base of Victor’s skull, pulling him down.

Someone whistles, and they pull back a bare few centimeters as Victor rests his forehead against Yuuri’s, watching those eyes dance up close and personal. 

He’s still got a lot ahead of him to figure out, and he knows it. There are still decisions to be made and paths to be chosen, but Victor knows one thing for certain—he’ll be walking down those roads not as Lilia’s Prince or The Top Student or even Yuuri’s Boyfriend, but as himself. And he can’t wait to learn more about who that person is going to be.

_Five years later..._

Yuri went on to take Victor’s place as Lilia’s prince, with much more fervor than Victor had. Once he graduated a few years later, he and Otabek both moved to Moscow, where Yuri dances in the Bolshoi, just like his mentor. Lilia always says, with a pointed sniff, that at least _one_ of her students lived up to his promise.

Mila moved to Paris after graduation and now teaches yoga alongside her girlfriend Sara, a chef who specializes in vegan cuisine and grows her own ingredients. They have two cats, because no matter what Mila claims, Yuri does not count as a third.

Georgi went on to university, where he is studying to be a therapist. He has a secret second career writing self-published romance novels under a pen name, which are wildly popular on the internet because their over the top metaphors are so easily meme-able. He remains single.

Takeshi proposed to Yuuko at their graduation party back home. She said yes, but then made him wait four more years for the actual wedding—after they both finished university. They expect their first child soon, and Takeshi plans to be a stay-at-home dad.

Chris and Phichit broke up again, but remain fast friends as they’ve both moved on to other people, which is great, because they will both be serving as the best men at Victor and Yuuri’s wedding. It’s being planned for this coming spring, when the cherry blossoms are in bloom...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading this whole thing! I had a lot of fun with this project, and working with Purin. Be sure you also navigate over to their profiles if the art gave you FEELINGs and you need to share :D This sweet story helped me earlier this year as I was kicking off my next big project, which is the Victuuri angst bang. It was lovely having something light and fun and generally adorable to switch off to whenever the angst got too sad. I hope it brightened up your summer as well.

**Author's Note:**

> You can find Purin at  
> [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/cutiepuriin/)  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/CutiePuriin)  
> [Tumblr](https://cutiepurin.tumblr.com/)
> 
> And you can find me at  
> [Twitter](https://twitter.com/louciferish)  
> [Tumblr](https://louciferish.tumblr.com/)  
> and basically every YOI Discord server ever made


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